


Signs of Things Unseen

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Gen, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1274533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been four years since high school and Blaine’s resigned himself to being “too intense” for anyone who matters. That is, until he meets a young actor whose life has become a constant performance. Tomorrow, Kurt will fly to New York and Blaine will go back to class, but for fourteen hours, all of Columbus is their playground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Great Dane

**Author's Note:**

> “As if you were on fire from within.  
> The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”  
> ― Pablo Neruda

Blaine Anderson grips his messenger bag, stares at the tiny bar stage, and prays for a blackout. Or better yet, the end of the concert that would not die. They call themselves “Jackie Daniels” and they’re abysmal. Blaine can enjoy self-mockery, but not a bad metal band that thinks they’re God’s gift to music.

“Ay shitheads!” The lead singer and guitarist, aka “Mohawk,” leans past the lip of the stage. “That was just the warm-up for the real deal,” he crows. “You ready to get your rocks off Columbus?”

Apparently, Columbus is not ready. 

“You suck!” someone calls from the crowd. From the back of the grimy bar, a pale hand chucks a beer can at the stage and narrowly misses Blaine’s head. His knuckles go white against the strap of his bag and he mutters the names of gods he’s only heard in history class.

“No. You SUCK,” Mohawk smirks, “and so did your mom last night.” He barks a laugh at his own joke and the crowd seethes in impotent rage. When the band launches into another round of screeching cords, Blaine does his best to blend in. Of course, that would be easier if Sam had told him that they were going to see thrash metal.

Two hours ago, Blaine had been standing outside of Sam’s room wondering why his best friend insisted on calling across the hallway when he wanted company. Contrary to everything his dorm mates had experienced over the previous last six months, some conversations shouldn’t be held at full volume in public.

This time, Blaine had opened the door and found Sam in his boxers, rooting through a pile of laundry. He’d looked up and grinned.

“Oh good, you’re here.” Sam picked up two shirts and shoved them towards Blaine’s face. “Which one says ‘I look awesome, but I don’t want to get with you because I already have a girlfriend’?”

Blaine frowned. “Where are you going to _not_ pick someone up?”

Sam lowered the two shirts and looked at Blaine like he’d dissed the Avengers.

“What?” Blaine crossed his arms over his chest. “We’re pretty close, but I still can’t read your mind.”

“We should get on that.”

“I know, Sam. It’s on the list, but where are you and your wrinkled shirt going?”

“We, and by that I mean you and me, not me and the shirt. . .”

“Right. Go on.”

“We’re going to a show and—” he held up a hand as Blaine tried to jump in.” Before you say anything. We’re going because it’s going to be awesome and there’s gonna be a whole crowd full of sexy young college students who are not my girlfriend, so I won’t be sharing these tracts of land with any lucky ladies.” Blaine tried not to snort as Sam slid his hands up his own torso and kept talking. “Now you, my man, can share your stuff—“

He gestured absently at Blaine’s everything.

“My what?” Blaine blanched.

“You know, your . . . assets,” he insisted as Blaine flushed. “You can share all you want and even if you don’t want to share, you should. It’s been, what, eight months since Marc?”

“Yes.” Blaine nodded reluctantly. It had been ten, but who was counting.

“Then it’s time to get out there, brother,” Sam said, all earnestness. “I don’t care how hard you pray. Men who love men are not just going to show up at your dorm room unless you start holding auditions. I mean, you could hold auditions—“

“Sam, I’m not holding auditions for the role of my boyfriend.” 

“Well then?” Sam threw his arms up and Blaine tried not to notice that he still wasn’t wearing pants. “We have to go find him right? Look, I know that you’re scared or gun-shy or something, but you won’t be on your own. I won’t let you do anything that’s too _you_.”

Blaine crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, pouting into his “I love bacon” pajamas. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He knew exactly what Sam was talking about.

In high school, he’d noticed a pattern; he fell hard and the objects of his affection were inevitably straight, in relationships, or incapable of living up to “Blaine” levels of intensity. When he loved, he loved with origami, odes, and wedding plans—not necessarily in that order. So when he was smitten with his Freshman year RA, or the kid who ran the pizza station in the cafeteria, he started checking with Sam because, apparently, Blaine’s instincts were idiots. Sam wasn’t always right, but he had a better gay-dar than Blaine and usually weeded out the ones who were, say, married or over 30.

In his infinite kindness, Sam didn’t press the point in his room. “I know you want to be more than the theater department dictator, even if you don’t talk about it,” Sam went on, “so we’re getting dressed and going to see Jackie Daniels. You have fifteen minutes to look like you aged beyond the fourth grade.”

“Excuse me?” he smiled in spite of himself. “I was in bed. There was popcorn.”

“Dude, you look like I just interrupted your marathon of _Blues Clues_. Gel up your hair and get dapper, ‘cause I’ve got two tickets with our names on ‘em.”

“Yes sir.” Blaine smiled and went to leave, when he realized that he’d forgotten something important. “Who are they, the band, I mean? How do you even know about the show?”

“You remember when I got the second job at the Pita Pit?” Blaine nodded and watched as Sam started working his way into the second of the two shirts.

“This repair guy had to come in to fix the fryer and it turns out he’s had his own group for years. They’ve written at least ten songs. They’re totally legit.” Shirt in place, Sam grabbed his deodorant from the top of the pile, and tossed it from hand to hand. “Why are you still standing here? I’m your friend and right now I’m your wingman. Stop worrying and go do whatever it is you do to get pretty.”

“I don’t get pretty.” Blaine smirked and threw a sock ball at Sam’s head on his way out the door.

“That’s not what you said last time,” Sam called. 

“Shut up,” Blaine called back. It was a weak retaliation, even for him, but Sam was right. He didn’t want to go out dancing in flannel, and it felt like an eternity since he’d allowed himself to feel the fluttery anxiety of a new crush. Not that he expected to run out and find Mr. Right or even Mr. Right Now, but sometimes possibility was even more intoxicating than the real thing. 

Of course, if he had known where Sam would be taking him, he might not have worked so hard on his hair.

As soon as they walked in the door of the Leaky Tap, Blaine knew that something was very wrong. The all-male audience dressed in dirty ripped t-shirts was the first tip-off that neither of them could get a date in this bar.

“No way, Sam,” Blaine turned an accusatory glare. “Please tell me that this is an elaborate joke.” 

Sam shrugged, “I’m not that good. But what’s the big deal? You’re _Blaine_. You make friends with, like--” he waved his hands in Blaine’s direction. “What’s the name for a person who hates other people?”

“A misanthropist?” he said. “Or these people?” he said a little lower, gesturing towards the room.

“Right. That thing,” Sam smiled. “You could make friends at Misanthropists Anonymous. You can blend in with these guys.”

“Not dressed like this, I couldn’t.” Blaine picked at his red polo in disgust. “I look like I’m here to do their calculus homework.”

“Sure, but you look like you’d do it well.” That elicited a hesitant smile and Sam tapped him on the ass as they moved towards the bar. “Let’s get some drinks, and we’ll call it an adventure, okay?”

“Fine.” He smacked Sam back, “but you’re buying.”

Blaine wound his way through the crowd with Sam on his tail, dodging bodies and hands already holding drinks. He wedged himself between two walking beards to get to the bar, but it was only when he held up two fingers to the bartender that he realized that he was on his own. Blaine jumped to see over the crowd and found his friend staring sheepishly at his phone. 

He didn’t have to ask. Sam was wearing his “I have to call my girlfriend” face. He started to apologize, but Blaine waved him down. No apologies necessary. Love was love and easily trumped any stupid concert. After shoving money into Blaine’s hand (“for drinks! Drink things!”), grabbing him for a hug, and promising to be back in, like, a minute, Sam made a beeline for the nearest exit. Blaine decided to make a sport of people watching in his absence.

One hour and one opening band later, he isn’t feeling so charitable. Sam still hasn’t reemerged and Blaine’s trying not to get irritated. Even though he’s been lucky enough to have his best wingman by his side for the last three years, being abandoned still stings. He wouldn’t dream of asking Sam to love his lady any less, but he sometimes wishes that the distance between Ohio and California didn’t make timing so delicate. Sam and Mercedes had been doing the long-distance thing since high school, and that meant chasing down time for conversations between classes and recording sessions in different time zones. Usually, Blaine admires their ability to remain in a committed relationship via Skype. God knows he hadn’t been in a relationship that had lasted longer than three months unless he counts Thad’s request to be “not-so-hetero platonic life-partners.”

Blaine sighs and checks his pocket watch; for all of his support, he’s still very alone in the crowd. During the gap between the opener and Jackie Collins, he’d started naming the bros in his eye-line based on the designs on the backs of their t-shirts. He’s developing a rapport with Pantera, Anthrax, Wrathchild, and their buddy Whitesnake, when the entire clump of bodies makes a move for more drinks and, for the first time, he can see the whole band.

Scanning the stage, he finds Mohawk, simulating oral sex on the spread V of his own fingers; the stunning nondescript bassist, whose expressionless face almost disappears into the venue walls; and finally, he finds a reason to enjoy the show.

As usual it’s a boy, but Blaine would be the first to explain, “it’s not like that.”

He’s not smitten; he’s surprised.

Tucked into the farthest upstage corner, behind the amps and extra guitars, he finds the drum kit and a giant of a man hammering away like a four-year-old. It’s not that the drummer is imprecise; he’s just beating on the drums with the kind of playful delight that Blaine usually associates with children on Christmas day. He can easily imagine this Great Dane puppy of a man getting his first drum kit as a little boy. He probably drove his mother crazy pretending to be Ringo Star and banging out solos late into the night. 

With each downbeat and riff, the man closes his eyes and _flails_ in a wild flurry of joy. And when a song ends, he stares in awe at his own hands and grins out at the audience as if to say, “Guys! Did you see that? I don’t even know how I did that!”

The difference between foreground and background couldn’t be more striking. While Mohawk and the faceless-bassist bang away on their strings, The Great Dane closes his eyes and plays for the concert in his own mind.

Right now, Blaine really rather be at that show.

For the first time since Sam’s disappearance, Blaine can’t help but smile, matching the drummer grin for grin. The “music” he’s making might feel alien, but he knows that smile. That’s the smile he wore for every Warbler performance, even the ones that ended in a pretty boy getting fired from the GAP. In fact, he wore that smile for every boy who inspired him to write mash notes and scream into his pillow in his childhood bedroom. That smile belongs to pure, unadorned, squealing adoration and it’s been a few too many months since Blaine allowed himself to feel that much without recoiling in shame. Some part of him couldn’t help but hear the old voices when he got too emotional or too intense or too. . . Blaine.  

Some days the voice sounded like Sebastian, after he’d grown bored with Blaine’s grand gestures, and those were the better days. Sebastian could be cutting, but he was the first boy to find Blaine’s full-throated romanticism genuinely charming. They were just looking for different things in the end, so Sebastian had gone off to greener pastures and Blaine had watched as he slept through every gay, bi, or hetero-flexible “pasture” in Lima. Still, the other voices were harder. Why couldn’t they comprehend that for him love was a verb, a noun, and an adjective all at the same time? 

On a gut level, he knows that The Great Dane would understand his brand of love because he’s living it all over that stage. He loves those drums. He loves those beats. He probably even loves his obnoxious lead singer, and Blaine loves him for it. So Blaine grins and the drummer grins, and they both probably look addled, but he can’t bring himself to care.


	2. Medium Levels of Stupid

The show doesn’t end so much as it just stops. The guitarist gives a final wail, tips over the mike stand, and starts chucking his equipment into the containers that never left the stage. The bassist and drummer follow suit, leaving the audience to figure out that it’s time to leave. Most of the crowd catches on quickly, waving their tickets at the coat-check boy and crowding the exits with beer-warmed bodies, but twenty minutes later Blaine still hasn’t made it to the door.

He’s gotten as far as the entryway, but he can’t bring himself to step out into the snow and, honestly, he’s not sure why.

He could blame it on Sam. It’s been nearly two hours since his friend disappeared to call Mercedes and Blaine’s starting to get worried. Even on their toughest days, when Sam botched his finals or Mercedes had to sue her landlord, they never stayed on the phone for this long. Sam likes to make presents and send flowers, but Blaine shudders to think what would keep him on the phone for more than 15 minutes.

Blaine sighs and distracts himself with a slow walk around the walls of the silent entryway, allowing the fingers of his right hand to skim over fading posters for [MEGACHURCH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9G3jnZk70) and [The Buried Wires](https://myspace.com/theburiedwires/music/song/adaleas-58939745-64195881?play=1). From the looks of it, Sam had been right about the bar, if not the night. Most of the posters that wallpaper the bar from ceiling to floor are for solidly indie bands that Blaine would eat up with a spoon. Sam knows him, and even if he has gone oddly AWOL, Blaine isn’t about to ditch him.

Although. . . even as he traces the pink robot on a q Volt Haunted House poster, he know that he isn’t really staying for Sam. His friend is a big boy, and if he can’t call, he’ll find his own way back to the dorms without Blaine holding his widdle hand.

No. Blaine isn’t worried or waiting; he’s drunk on adrenaline.

Between the roller coaster of emotions over the last two hours and the roller coaster of activity over the last two months he can’t tell if he’s too tired to get back to his room or too full of bone-rattling energy to even think about going to bed. The swing from anticipation to irritation and back to bliss has him spinning, but he knows that when he walks through the main door and back into the snow, he’ll have to leave some part of this off-kilter joy behind, and he isn’t ready for that just yet.

When he’s rounded the full entryway for the fourth time, Blaine leans against the doorway that separates the foyer from the coat check room and pulls out his phone. He can just make out the bartender and a waitress cleaning up behind the bar, but no one’s told him that he needs to leave yet. Maybe, he thinks, he can work some of this pointless energy out on Candy Crush before Sam reappears, so he slides his phone open only to find a tiny 14 in the top corner. Somehow, more than a dozen voice messages and nearly 20 texts have appeared since he changed out of his bacon pajamas, and he hadn’t heard a one.

Blaine’s heart sinks into his stomach. His mother might be sick again, or it could be Cooper, but neither is as likely as the possibility that he is going to be very, very embarrassed.

Of course, every single text is from Sam. They begin hardly ten minutes after he’d stepped out the door to call his girlfriend.

 **(9:32)** heeey im really dumb. My ticket was with my money and you have my money. come tell the bouncer guy that Im not trying to break in.

 **(9:46)** Im sooory, but please get out here. My butts cold and this guy thinks im a terrorist.

 **(9:47)** a really dumb terrorist.

 **(10:02)** im going around to the front in case your there. K?

 **(10:08)** you werent there

It only spiraled from there. Sometime around 10:20 Sam had started quoting song lyrics and posting tagged picture of snowdrifts on Facebook.

 **(10:45)** greg the bouncer guy says I have to go so illsee you later? I hoep the show is way better than it looked!!! BLAM

That was more than an hour ago and if Blaine hadn’t felt sick before. . . He backs into the wall between the coatroom and the front door and slides down to the floor, caught between tears and horrified laughter.

He’s a dick. He’s such a dick. Moreover, he’s a dick who spent the last two hours feeling sorry for himself for being abandoned. The irony of it all tips the scales and he’s suddenly giggling like a madman. Through heaving breaths and the blur of tears, he texts Sam back— so many ways to say “I’m sorry.” As he hits send, the phone skitters out of his hand and comes to land with a sick crack by the doorway— and by a foot that he doesn’t know.

Blaine freezes and realizes that it’s gotten colder awfully quickly. Sometime between the discovery of Sam’s messages and his attempt to respond, that door had opened and he hadn’t even noticed. He looks up to see what can only be a man looking down at him from the doorway. From his position on the floor, he makes out dark boots and jeans, but the rest of the man is hardly more than a black outline, a human eclipse, backlit by the moon’s reflection off of the snow outside.

“Are you lost?” The man reaches out a hand and Blaine stumbles to his feet, only to realize that he should have stayed where he was. Standing, he can actually see the man’s sharp features, his high sculpted hair, and those eyes . . . the blue of ice and clear skies. He’s stunning and Blaine knows that his stupid, open face has gone from bewilderment to awe.

Blaine blinks into the man’s waiting face. “No, not lost. Or drunk,” he adds quickly. The man seems dubious, but what else can he expect. He’s siting on a dirty bar floor at midnight and throwing his cell phone at attractive strangers. “But I am a little confused,” he sighs. “It’s been a long night.”

The man’s eyes crinkle with amusement. “I can only imagine.” He stoops to pick up the phone at his feet and places it in Blaine’s hands, their fingers touching for a moment longer than necessary and several moments shorter than Blaine would like.

Blaine sweeps his hands over the new crack on his screen and watches the man out of the corner of his eye. “Were--” he starts, tentatively. “Were you at the show? I feel like I might have noticed you.”

“I might say the same to you.” Blaine swallows hard as the man reaches out to tug on one side of his bow tie and then slowly smooths it back into place. “But no,” the man smiles, “I wasn’t in the mosh pit this time.” He drops into a low curtsy, arms spread like the ringmaster in a Victorian circus. “Kurt Hummel: itinerant band support at your service.”

Blaine snorts. “Really? You’re a roadie?” His disbelief comes out more direct than he intends and he cringes as the man, Kurt, steps back, as if stung. Blaine jumps forward to correct himself. “What I mean is--” he stutters, “you’re a roadie . . . in 2013 Dior?” He gestures down towards Kurt’s jeans. “I don’t recognize your shirt, but I would know those cuffs anywhere, and I wouldn’t risk scuffing them on some rusty amp.” Kurt peers down at one denim-covered leg in alarm and Blaine realizes his error. “Not that your jeans are scuffed! I’m just saying that you must have a pretty remarkable reason for helping out.”

Kurt looks up with the shy hint of a smile, and Blaine feels his tension slip out in a giddy rush. “He’s not remarkable, but he’s family,” Kurt says and tucks his hands into his pockets. “So what about you?”

“What brings me to this fine establishment?” Kurt nods. “I’ll give you the short version, which is that my friend thought we were going to a different very kind of show. Then he had to leave, and now I’m not sure what to do with myself.”

“Thus the confusion?”

“Thus the confusion.”

“Well then Mr—?“ Kurt trails off with a question in his eyes and Blaine’s hand shoots out, almost of its own accord.

“Blaine, Blaine Anderson,” he says quickly and silently thanks whatever gods are listening that he doesn’t say anything stupid, like, for example, Blaine Hummel or “whoever you want me to be.”

“Mr. Anderson then.” A smirk pulls at the corners of Kurt’s lips as he shakes the outstretched hand. “What can I do to help? I’m already playing hooky, so I might as well make myself useful.” He leans against the wall and pats the patch of wall at his side.

Blaine ducks his head to hide the blush creeping up his neck, and moves to settle, gingerly, at Kurt’s side. It might be his imagination, but it feels warmer here. “I’m thinking about doing something really stupid,” he says.

Kurt cocks his head. “How stupid are we talking?”

“Medium? Medium levels of stupid?” Blaine’s fingers itch to tap out a toneless melody on the walls, so he taps against his thigh instead. “I might be thinking about going backstage to meet the band.”

Kurt raises one hand to muffle a laugh. “And?” he says. “They don’t bite or, at least, most of them don’t. Their manager definitely bites, but I’m sure the band would kill for attention that doesn’t come from their family members.” He waves one hand at the empty bar. “You’ll notice that the fans aren’t exactly storming the barricades.”

Blaine laughs under his breath and finally meets Kurt’s eyes. “I suppose,” he says “it isn’t what I want to do, but why.”

Kurt cocks an eyebrow and waits for Blaine to continue.

“There was this guy.”

If possible, the eyebrow lifts even higher.

“He was in the band— playing the drums. I thinking about leaving, but then I just couldn’t stop staring at the way he threw himself into the music.“ Blaine stares at the opposite wall as he talks, mind trailing back to the show, so it takes him a beat or two to realize that Kurt isn’t responding, or smiling. In fact, the other man has gone awfully white.

“You said he played the drums?” Kurt says. His voice can apparently get very quiet.

“Yes?” Blaine shrugs. “The other two were so serious, but he was smiling and playing like a big puppy. He made me want to smile too, so I spent the whole show watching him.”

“I remember that feeling.” Kurt murmurs, staring past Blaine’s shoulder. “And now you want to go meet him.” It isn’t a question.

“Exactly.” Blaine smiles tentatively at Kurt’s furrowed brow and mentally smacks himself for saying something wrong. He was careful, just like he’s been careful for the past year, but like always this beautiful boy has realized that Blaine is an emotional car crash waiting to happen.

Kurt takes a deep breath and wraps his arms around his body, like an extra cardigan. “Actually,” he starts. “I’m sure the drummer would be flattered if you wanted to tell him. In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that he has a girlfriend, and she’s not very good at sharing, well, anything--“

Blaine’s mouth drops. Oh and then again, OH.

That’s not what he meant. Although, in retrospect, he can see that that’s exactly how it sounded.

“Wait!” Blaine waves frantically to halt Kurt’s thoughts in their tracks. “You— I said that all wrong. I don’t want to date the drummer.” Kurt’s eyes narrow and Blaine backpedals. “Not that there would be anything wrong with wanting to date him or wanting to date any guy. I mean, I like guys— a lot. Not a lot of guys, but a lot of . . . Like.”

Great. Now he’s flailing, but at least Kurt no longer looks like he’s holding onto his own sides for dear life. Blaine takes a deep breath and continues, a little more slowly. “I’m sure his girlfriend is very lucky, but he isn’t my type. Does that make any sense at all?”

For a long moment, Kurt looks down at his feet and Blaine thinks that he might have lost his chance (chance at what, he doesn’t know), but then Kurt’s shoulders start to shake and Blaine can see that he’s trying not to laugh out loud. When he lifts his head, his eyes shine with surprised amusement; Blaine thinks he could set up a home and live in the glow of that light.

“Yes,” Kurt giggles. “That makes as much sense as anything else you’ve said tonight. So— you like boys a lot, huh?” He raises his eyebrows with an impish grin.

Blaine imagines kissing it off of his face, but settles for swatting him on the shoulder. “Hey!” he says with a mock pout. “I was being vulnerable just then. You don’t know what it’s like to see someone else, like that guy, who loves playing for the sheer joy of making music. It was a religious experience.”

“I know.” Kurt says more softly, still smiling at Blaine’s fluster. “And I know what that feels like too.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Kurt echoes. “I was five when I held my first solo performance of _The Nutcracker_ in my parents’ living room. My pointe work might have been shaky, but the costumes were gorgeous.”

“I’m sure they were,” Blaine smirks.

“See?” Kurt knocks Blaine’s shoulder with his own. “Now I’m being vulnerable, you cretin.”

“Yes,” Blaine nods seriously. “Very vulnerable.”

“If you’re going to be like that, you definitely don’t get to hear about my Royal family musical,” Kurt says, “or my performance of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” outside Breadstix.” Blaine’s confusion must read across his face, because Kurt looks a little abashed. “What? It’s a bad Italian restaurant and I was tipsy, I’m sure no one minded—“

“I know,” Blaine says suddenly, still squinting in confusion. “I’m sure they loved it, but— Breadstix?” He lays one hand, almost tentatively on Kurt’s elbow. “Are you from Lima?”

“Yes?” Kurt shrugs. “If you say anything about ‘losers,’ so help me—“

“No!” Blaine grins and reluctantly pulls back his hand. “I mean, me too.”

“You’re from Lima, Ohio.” Kurt mouth drops open and Blaine can’t tell if it’s out of disbelief or pleasure. “But how?” he says. “I went to McKinley for four years and, don’t take this the wrong way, but boys in Brooks Brothers ties don’t come from Lima Heights. Where were you hiding?”

“Try Dalton Academy,” he says, straightening invisible lapels, “more affluent boys and a lot less homophobia.”

“Sounds nice.” Kurt smiles, a little wistfully, “at least the last part.”

Blaine’s about to ask why McKinley strikes a familiar note in the back of his mind, but then he remembers.

After his transfer, he hadn’t been able to stop seeing headlines that felt achingly familiar. The ones about homophobia and school bullying popped out of the local section of The Lima News as though they’d been highlighted just for him:

_“Local Students Suspended for Prom Queen Prank”_

_“Lesbian Teen Reshapes Congressional Race”_

And

_“High School Principal Denies Reports of Locker Room Suicide Attempt”_

It was always gay kids and it was always at McKinley, right there between water rate hikes and the new Sunday comics section, as if it was nothing. He’d pored over those articles in his room, memorizing every word and imagining the lives that lived between the lines. It must have been like entering a war zone every day before homeroom, and those kids didn’t all have the privilege of running away to their very own gay Hogwarts.

“Blaine? You there?” Kurt snaps in front of Blaine’s downcast eyes and jerks him back to the present. “It must be after your bedtime, Mr. Anderson.”

Blaine wants to respond, wants to joke about how he doesn’t usually stay up until the wee hours with strange boys in bars, but he can’t stop staring at the delicate line of Kurt’s neck. If The Lima News can be believed, this man walked through hell for four years. How on earth did he survive?

It isn’t until Kurt’s eyes go wide that Blaine realizes he must have said some of that last part out loud. His hands go cold and he waits for Kurt to tell him off, to tell him that his high school trauma is none of Blaine’s business. There is no way in which it’s his business, but Kurt stays silent.

His eyes are unreadable as they move over Blaine’s face like a scientist trying to make sense of new data. Kurt just takes him in and Blaine is fairly certain that he should feel uncomfortable. This kind of silence would usually drive him mad. At this point in the conversation (flirtation?), Blaine would usually be jumping out of his skin looking for ways to make a clear, undeniable impression. Almost every ill-advised serenade or craft project he’d ever made had come out of quiet moments with unreadable boys. For once though, Blaine isn’t aching to dance on tables to make this boy smile. It’s easy here, under Kurt’s gaze and, he thinks that what he’s feeling might be calm.

He can imagine how perfect it would be if Kurt leaned in for a kiss, but Blaine doesn’t feel that urgent pull to make it happen. For the first time, he just wants to drop to his knees right in the middle of The Leaky Tap and wait for Kurt to decide what comes next.

Suddenly, he feels a switch flip, and Kurt’s blank gaze becomes an amused twinkle. “You should go backstage,” he says and smiles like he’s had the best idea ever. “They should be done with take-down, so you could just have a beer and get to know the band.“ He crosses his arms over his chest with a self-satisfied smirk.

It’s a wonderful look on him, but this is not the sort of “what’s next” that Blaine saw coming. Perhaps he missed a step in all of that zen. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asks. “Haven’t we established that I’m a disaster today? The poor guy’s probably going to think I’m proposing to him or something.”

“Unlikely.” Kurt pushes off from the wall and steps backwards towards the door, still smiling. “And even if he did, he’d probably be fine with it. His name is Finn, and he’s nice, really nice, much nicer than I am.” He waggles an eyebrow and Blaine finally cracks a smile. “The door’s that way,” Kurt says, adorably proud of himself. He raises one long arm to point quickly towards a dingy door, just visible behind the rightmost wing of the stage.

Blaine fiddles with his fingers. On the one hand, this could be an awful idea. On the other, Kurt still watches the door with expectant eyes.

Kurt cocks his head, and those eyes look down, softly to meet his own. “At least you won’t be confused anymore,” he smiles. “Plus, you should always trust a roadie in Dior.”

Blaine just nods. Yes, yes, yes, as Kurt turns to open the front door, waggling his fingers over his left shoulder. “Goodbye Mr. Anderson. Good luck.”

By the time Blaine manages his way to a “bye Kurt,” the other man has disappeared, his footprints in the darkened snow already obscured by the incoming drift.


	3. Saying Yes

Blaine makes his way backstage following the distant sound of voices. The door had been open and the stairs down the greenroom had been lit, so the only apparent obstacle is his fear that he might actually find someone. The voices at least seem to be enjoying themselves. He’d hate to appear in the middle of an argument, but the joy in their laughter and clinking glass might be even worse. The band members and whoever’s with them are having fun, and he could potentially ruin that fun by being unimaginably awkward.

And yet. Blaine tamps down on his anxiety and keeps moving. Kurt’s right; he wants to do this, and he’s never been one to avoid doing something for fear of rejection. If he could read his own, original poetry for Sebastian, then he can certainly exchange a few pleasantries with a man who holds absolutely no sexual interest for him. Although, he probably should keep that bit out of the conversation. He pointedly does not think about the fact that Kurt essentially ordered him to go backstage or that he had never seriously considered saying no.

As he reaches the bottom of the stairs, a metal door cracks open, and Blaine finds himself face to face with the man himself, who also happens to be one of the tallest people he has ever seen. From the audience, he had been able to see that the drummer was lanky, but next to Blaine’s smaller physique (Tina liked to call him “fun-sized”) he seemed almost monstrous, like he might consider eating Blaine for an after-dinner snack.

Blaine stumbles down the last of the stairs to introduce himself, but Finn gets there first, wiping his right hand on his sweat-soaked t-shirt and grabbing Blaine’s hand. “Hey!” he says, breaking into a wide smile. “Are you the manager? ‘Cause we’re out of toilet paper down here and everybody’s been drinking. You know what I mean?”

Blaine wants to agree with the sentiment and disagree with the idea that he could, in any way, be the bar manager, so he tries to do both. This is not a good idea. “Sure! That makes a lot of sense.” Blaine nods too quickly and then tries to shake his head. The result is an unfortunate amalgamation of the two. “But I’m not the manager or, really, anybody who can help with that.”

The man’s eyes squint in confusion.

“Sorry” Blaine continues. “I’m just— I was at the show.”

“Okay,” Finn nods, even though he still looks confused. He takes a sip of the beer in his left hand and beckons Blaine through the open door. Blaine trots after him, happy not to have been kicked to the curb, but then he actually gets inside.

The first thing he notices is the sound. It hadn’t been as noticeable, what with the heavy door and the pounding of his adrenaline. Inside, he realizes that the only sounds in the building, and the people making those sounds, are all in this room, talking, laughing, and trying not to pay too much attention to him. He finds the other band members first, Mohawk and the other one. They both have matching beers in their hands, but there must be at least a dozen other people in the room and none of them seem to be doing anything except sitting on metal folding chairs and getting wasted on Natty Lite. There’s no way a band of this size and, well, caliber needs this many roadies, but he can’t see anything else that might suggest why they’re all here.

“Hey,” the drummer snaps to catch his attention and Blaine’s struck by a sense of deja vu. The gestures were almost identical, but then he starts thinking: how well would Kurt and the drummer have to know each other to have the same snap? He shakes himself back to the present and Finn chuckles under his breath. “I’d offer you a beer man, but it doesn’t look like you need it.” Blaine laughs as the other man continues, “So, you liked the show?”

He sounds curious and more than a little surprised, so Blaine takes a deep breath and jumps in. Without planning or a decent wingman, all he has is the truth.

Five minutes into his ramble, he knows that it isn’t going well. The drummer listens intently, but he can’t seem to make heads or tails of what Blaine is saying. The beer might be partly to blame, but Blaine also gets the feeling that he isn’t making a whole lot of sense. He tries talking about the “glories of making music” and the “sense of camaraderie” that he felt watching Finn on stage, but something is lost in translation. Finn keeps asking the same questions (“What did you like so much about the show?” and “But you don’t play the drums, right?”) at increasingly louder volumes until other people in the room start shooting them dirty looks.

He tries lowering his voice, but that makes Finn even more confused. When Finn raises his voice, a terrifying woman sporting a high pony and a tight wrap dress starts stalking towards them and, based on the irritation in her eyes, she’s as likely to toss him out the door on his head as on his feet. Blaine is about to launch into his third attempt at an explanation, when he hears a remarkably familiar voice.

“Blaine!” the voice cries. “It’s so good to see you!” He turns towards the sound just in time to see Kurt Hummel throwing himself into his open arms and hugging him like one of them had just returned from battle. He had been so focused on Finn and the impending attack of the scary wrap-dress woman that he hadn’t noticed the group of men and women, all in black, entering with Kurt from the opposite side of the greenroom.

Kurt releases the hug, but grabs his shoulders, still talking quickly and at a scarily high pitch. “Wow! I can’t believe it! Finn!” he turns to the drummer without releasing his grip. “This is Blaine. I must have told you about him. We’ve been friends since high school.” When Finn shrugs, looking as stunned as Blaine feels, Kurt turns back and looks him right in the eyes. “Blaine,” he grins, shaking his head in mock amazement, “why didn’t you tell me that you were going to be at the show?”

And then Kurt winks.

It’s quick, so quick that anyone else might have taken it for a twitch, and Blaine almost laughs out loud at the brazen silliness of it all. To be honest, he has no idea what’s going on or why Kurt wants to pull one over on everyone in the room. He feels as lost as Finn looks. However, he knows a good show when he sees one, and Kurt is putting on dinner theater of the highest order. Of course, Kurt’s also the only one with a script for this performance, so Blaine’s just going to have to improvise.

Blaine’s good at improvisation; all he has to do is say yes.

He makes eye contact with Kurt, who is still holding on to his shoulders, and jumps in with both feet. “I didn’t know that you would be here!” he says, a smile ripping across his face. “It’s been years. How—is this your Finn?” He gestures to Finn without breaking eye contact, and Kurt picks up the baton.

“You mean I never showed you a picture of my brother?” Kurt grabs a hold of Blaine’s forearm and pulls him forward to where Finn stands, dumb-founded. “Finn,” he says, “this is my friend, Blaine. Blaine, this is my brother, Finn and those two nosey people over there,” Kurt points behind Finn to where the Mohawk and the scary woman are watching them closely, “are Santana and Puck. They were in the New Directions with me, you remember?”

Blaine nods back, grabbing on to the new information and tabling his confusion for later. He’s going to need an explanation for how Kurt and Finn could have come from the same family tree, let alone the same womb. “Of course,” he smiles and waves in their direction. “You talked about Glee club all the time. Nice to finally meet you all.”

“You too.” Finn nods tentatively and slowly raises his hand, as though Kurt’s his math teacher and Finn’s lost on a problem set. “How did you say that you know him again?”

Kurt tries to jump in, but Blaine beats him to the punch. “We met outside Breadstix,” he riffs. “Kurt was singing, and I couldn’t help but say something. There’s just something about Evita.” He shrugs as Kurt tries not to laugh. Just like that, they have a perfectly picturesque first meeting that, sadly, never happened.

“Right,” Kurt replies, nodding towards Finn. “He complimented me on my excellent taste in music—“

“—and shoes.”

“And shoes,” Kurt adds. “We talked, and we’ve been friends ever since,” he finishes with a little flourish, but Finn still shakes his head.

“Secret friends?” He squints at Blaine as though hoping his memory will come into focus. “I don’t remember hearing about some friend who liked musicals and wore bow ties and stuff. Why would you keep that a secret, unless—“ Finn’s confusion blossoms into a grin of recognition. “OH DUDE. I got it. Sorry. Secret friend.” He looks so proud of his brother that he could burst.

Kurt, on the other hand, looks positively mortified. He opens his mouth so say something— anything—but Santana is faster and far more eager.

“And to think,” she says, stepping into the circle, “for the longest time we didn’t know if our little Porcelain here even had boy parts.” She turns towards Blaine with an expression he usually associates with evil Disney Queens and adds, “Leave it to him to find the only other hobbit in the shire who dresses like my little nephew and my abuelo at the same time.”

Blaine takes a step back as she reaches to fiddle with his tie. If this woman thinks that a tongue-lashing is going to leave him shaking in his shoes, she’s clearly never met Sebastian Smythe.

“Actually,” he says, smiling the sweetest saccharine he can muster, “I think it was more because I was a Warbler. Technically, I was the competition.” A look of recognition passes around the group, and Blaine knows that he’s hit on the right excuse. For his part, Kurt looks ready to kiss him on the mouth, and Blaine’s just fine with that too. “And for the record,” he adds, “we’re just friends.”

“Good friends,” Kurt says, nudging him with his shoulder. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you— any of you—about Blaine back in high school. With Jessie just out of the picture, I didn’t think anyone wanted to meet a Warbler. Plus,” he scuffs his shoes against the floor and Blaine gets the sense that their imaginary history is about to collide with reality. “You all know that I was a mess during Junior year, with sectionals and then Karofsky. . .” He trails off, eyes down, suddenly fascinated by a spot on the ground.

“A lot of things were a mess that year,” Santana says, more softly, and all of the former New Directions nod to a common memory. Blaine wonders if Kurt walked through hell on his own or if some of these strange faces were there too.

Puck breaks the heavy silence by slapping a beer into Blaine’s hand. “Welcome to the pack, brother!” He maneuvers himself between Kurt and Blaine, and drapes an arm around each of their shoulders, as Finn raises his beer in a mock toast. “I have to ask one vital question before you can have the Puckmaster seal of approval,” he continues. “Where are you on IHOP?”

Blaine does a double take between Puck and Kurt and then back to Puck. Considering the evening so far, he could be serious. “We’re going in thirty,” Puck says “and I guarantee that you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Kurt over here finish off two orders of the New York Cheesecake pancakes.”

Even if Blaine weren’t fond of IHOP, Kurt’s blush would be enough for him to accept the offer. He’s about to say as much when Kurt wriggles out of Puck’s grasp.

“Thank you Puck!” he says, little too brightly. “I’m just going to borrow Blaine for a moment and we’ll catch up with you, okay?” Without waiting for a response, Kurt starts walking towards an unoccupied spot along the wall and beckons for Blaine to follow.

Of course, Blaine follows, trailing the bob and weave of Kurt’s body as he winds his way through the clumps of band members and roadies.

When they reach the wall, Kurt glances back towards his friends, and breaks into the biggest, most beautiful grin that Blaine has ever seen. He’s all teeth and shining eyes. A giggle threatens to bubble out of his throat. “Did you see that?” he says, pulling Blaine in by the upper arm. “Did you see what we did? That was the best performance I’ve ever been a part of. I want that on my tombstone.”

Blaine sees. He also sees Kurt’s eyes, shining a brilliant blue, and he feels the grip of Kurt’s hand along the side of his bicep, the whisper of Kurt’s laughter on his face, and it’s almost too much to feel so much and also make words come into being. “I know. I saw!” he says and mirrors Kurt’s grin. “But why? How did you—?”

“I don’t know!” Kurt bites his lip with a laugh and leans his head against the wall. “You were dying out there and I thought it was the only way to get you into our little after-party and let Finn out of his misery. He’s had a long week and I’m not sure you would have made sense to him on a good night.”

Blaine glances over to where Finn’s grabbing another beer and laughs under his breath. “I don’t know if I should flattered or insulted.” He slaps Kurt on the shoulder, lightly, and ignores the tingles that it sends up his own arm. “You’re just lucky that I can think on my feet. Otherwise that would have been over very quickly.”

Kurt huffs out a laugh. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Blaine waits for qualifiers or an explanation for how Kurt can trust him after an hour of miscommunication, but they never come. Instead, they stare out into the chattering crowd and let the words hang, easy and unquestioned.

Eventually, Finn swings by and pulls Blaine into the crowd. It’s mostly local friends and band supporters, there more for the party than the work. As soon as they find out that Kurt’s new friend is a Buckeye, Blaine has a dozen new hands to shake and names to learn. He finds that it’s simple blending in with a rowdy gang of musicians and former choir geeks who speak in a mix of patter and performance that he already knows. So even when a blonde woman pulls Kurt away to make better drinks, Blaine continues circling from conversation to conversation.

That, on its own, is nothing new. Blaine’s always been what his mother called “a charming little man.” He knows how to enjoy making other people feel comfortable with easy banter, but today, part of him can’t stay settled in his own body. Even as he learns about Puck’s entrepreneurial ambitions or hears how Santana became the band’s manager, he feels Kurt’s presence on the other side of the room.

Without looking, he can pinpoint the other man’s position as they circle around and past one another in the room. For lack of a better term, he thinks, he has Kurt-dar— a gentle heat on the edge of his vision and a persistent thrum under his skin that says, “Kurt is here. You know where to find him and he knows how to find you.”

For forty-five minutes they hardly speak to one another. A room full of strangers wants to make his acquaintance and, as he learns, it’s been years since most of them have seen Kurt. Blaine gathers that he’s been away, but at college or somewhere else he doesn’t know. There’s only so many questions an “old friend” can ask without risking the game.

They don’t talk, but Blaine peeks over and, more often than not, he finds Kurt looking back. Try as he might, he can’t read the fleeting glimpses of eye contact and half-smiles flashing across Kurt’s face. Still, some bone-deep part of Blaine already trusts this man and, he thinks, pancakes are as fine a way as any other to figure out why.


	4. Tiny Bones

Kurt’s always dreamed of doing dinner theater.

Of course, as a boy, he’d imagined a murder mystery in a Sinatra-era cocktail bar, while pearl-wearing well-to-dos sipped Chardonnay and nibbled on canapés. It was always so classy, refined, and utterly devoid of breakfast food. He’d certainly never imagined giving a live show in an IHOP, but Blaine is still giving an ovation-worthy performance.

Nearly one hour after they finally wound their way out of the Leaky Tap basement, the band and their temporary entourage have settled onto their thrones as the kings and queens of the 24-hour IHOP.

They don’t have much competition. With the exception of one family eating with a glassy, road-trip gaze, the place has been empty since they arrived.

When they walked in from the cold, shedding scarves and fogged glasses, Finn and Matt had shoved two long tables together and now their dozen bodies sit crunched around a space meant for ten. Knees knock against knees when they stand to reach the syrup and Puck can’t put his elbows on the table the way he’d like, but no one suggests spreading out to one of the ten other freshly cleaned booths that sit abandoned on their periphery. Perhaps, they all share Kurt’s sense that being completely comfortable would defeat the purpose of eating lousy, fatty pancakes at one in the morning.

Somehow, Blaine and Kurt end up on the same side of the long table, but with two people in between, so Kurt has to lean over his stack of cheesecake pancakes (with real chunks of New York Cheesecake!) to see Blaine’s end of the table. Down there, across from Santana, her girlfriend and too many faces that he really ought to know, Blaine is, for lack of a better word, holding forth. He’s had his little audience of four in the palm of his hand since they arrived, and Kurt’s fairly certain that Blaine doesn’t even know that he’s doing it.

Kurt can’t make out every word over Finn, Puck, and Matt’s conversation at the other end of the table, but he can see how Blaine’s gestures pull laughter from his little audience like a conductor with a well-trained choir. One twist of a wrist, and they gasp or groan. Even Santana seems unable to resist the joy radiating off of him in waves.

He leans over his plate to watch the flash of easy pleasure in Blaine’s eyes, and tries not to over think where on earth this man has come from. It’s like he’s dropped from the sky onto the floor of the Leaky Tap, perfectly designed as Kurt’s one-night friend. Kurt can’t deny that much of his own pleasure in Blaine’s show has been in the way that Blaine’s taken the attention away from him.

Kurt isn’t usually adverse to attention, but he never exactly told Finn, or any of the others, why he’d suddenly called from New York and asked to join their touring band for a couple weeks. Some of them must have seen that his Facebook status had changed, but no one had apparently wanted to ask directly. Instead, they’d just been trying to make him uncomfortable enough to talk.

It was never going to work if he didn’t want it to. He’s always had a better poker face than people have expected, but it was nice to catch someone looking his way without the unspoken demand for an explanation. Blaine’s glances may have carried curiosity, but no more than his own.

Since Blaine arrived, his friends had started looking at him instead, as if this new “old friend” could give them everything that Kurt refuses to offer. So as they dance through an imaginary past, his old friends watch for clues. It seems that he’s gotten half of what he wished for as a boy; he’s performing a mystery without a murder. They think that he’s being more open, even playful, with Blaine because they’ve known each other forever, when the truth is quite the opposite.

Whenever their midnight breakfast at IHOP comes to an end, so will their shared performance and then they’ll go their separate ways. Kurt will go back to auditions and a newly empty apartment in New York, while Blaine goes back to . . . whatever it is that he does and where ever it is that he does it. Kurt snorts a laugh under his breath. He doesn’t even know where Blaine lives.

Santana’s high shrieking laugh jots Kurt back to the present and to the middle of Blaine’s story. He’s fazed in and out but remembers something about a “scrapbook” and a “present.” When he looks over, he finds Blaine leaning over his empty plate, gesturing down toward an invisible something where his pancakes used to be. His voice rises over the din in proud glee. “You don’t understand! I was up all night cutting out pictures and gluing in the borders with the scalloped edges. I almost fell asleep in social studies the next day.” He grins at his imaginary handiwork and Kurt eases in, ready to take the baton.

“And of course, I loved it,” he says with a wink. Blaine ducks his head and smiles down at his lap. “Your scrapbooks are beautiful.”

“You never did tell me why you were so sad at that coffee date, though.”

“No?”

“No.” Blaine smirks and Kurt wants to reach across the table and hug him. He hasn’t had this much fun in ages. “You mentioned something about an audition, but I don’t think you wanted to upset me.”

“How sweet of me,” Kurt smirks back. “This was my senior year, right?” Blaine nods seriously, as if it matters. “Then it must have been West Side Story. I had to fight tooth and nail for Tony, while Rachel sat around and let Maria fall into her lap. Thank you again for the beautiful gift, Blaine. You noticed when I was in pain and some people who will remain nameless,” he turns pointedly towards Santana, “wouldn’t have noticed if I had been run over by a herd of stampeding bison.”

Santana rolls her eyes, but there’s no guile in it. As she crosses her arms and turns towards Kurt, it’s more like picking up an old hobby. “Are you kidding me? Of course I noticed that you had your panties in a twist. I noticed everything in that school. The only difference between me and Martha Stewart over here is that I didn’t care.”

Her girlfriend pokes her in the ribs with eyebrows raised and Santana sighs out a minor conceit. “Ok, so I probably cared, but I maintain that I had your best interest at heart. Scrapbooks and scrapbookers are not to be trusted.”

Kurt leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. This should be good. “Oh really?”

“I’m serious as the grave, Lady Hummel. There is something deranged about spending that much money on specialty scissors and I am not convinced that your undercover hobbit is any different. Sure he says that he had ‘no idea’ that you were going to be a the concert tonight, but for all we know he’s been building a creepy, sticker-covered shrine to your ass since high school.”

“Santana, just because you have an unhealthy fixation on my body, doesn’t mean that anyone else has memorized my posterior. What was it you were saying about bisexuality again?”

“What? That it’s a ruse invented by musical theater and the girl who played Sookie on _True Blood_?” One of the roadies throws a napkin at Santana’s head and she tosses it back, laughing. “Still true, and Bambi Kruger over here probably still stashed the bodies of a few ‘old buddies’ in the crawlspace.”

“Because all scrapbookers are undercover sociopaths?” Kurt shoots back. “Does that mean I have a secret collection of thumbs hidden next to my bedazzler? That’s going to come as a shock to Rachel when she needs to borrow the sewing kit.”

Santana shrugs. “I’m just saying, don’t come crying to me when your long lost boy toy starts standing on tables and singing odes to your severed limbs. I called it. The binders are always a dead giveaway.” She takes a dramatic bite out of a pancake and Kurt sticks out his tongue. For just a minute, it was like they were seventeen again, and Kurt cannot believe how much he’s missed this powder keg of a woman.

He only wishes that Rachel were here to see the show, and he doesn’t just mean his sass-off with Santana. She would have loved that particular blast from the past, but he’s surprised at how much he wishes Rachel could see the little dance that he and this strange boy have maintained for almost two hours. If she’d been here, she probably would have seen through the act while they were still at the bar, but played along anyway because, and here’s the real kicker, she would have adored Blaine.

It’s only when he imagines Rachel’s moony adoration for a kindred spirit that he realizes Blaine isn’t laughing along with the others. In fact, he hasn’t been laughing for a while. Kurt leans forward, past the other bodies on their side of the table and finds Blaine staring down at his empty plate, his shallow breaths coming hard and fast. He’s silent and Kurt can almost see him shrinking deep into his own body, as though the force field drawing the table’s attention has suddenly collapsed inward . . . and no one else seems to notice.

Kurt leans back to reach around behind the other chairs, but he isn’t fast enough. Before he can say anything, Blaine slips his phone out of his pocket, pulls his jacket off the back of his chair, and quietly makes a beeline for the door. When he rounds the table, Kurt tries to catch his eye, but Blaine isn’t seeing anything right now. His gaze sits glassy and dead behind his eyes as he winds his way past the empty table and out the front door.

By the time the door closes behind him, Kurt’s already on his feet. He invited Blaine here for this ridiculous charade and if something’s gone horribly wrong, then it’s his job to make damn sure it gets fixed. Without tearing his gaze from the door, he mutters that he’ll be right back. Finn’s attention is elsewhere, but he hums his assent, and so Kurt carefully follows in Blaine’s wake. The chatter continues behind him, rising and falling in waves of laughter, until he pushes the front door open and steps into snowy silence.

He’s gone. Outside of the IHOP, Blaine seems to have simply disappeared, that is, until Kurt notices a fresh trail of footprints leading around the right side of the building. He follows and calls ahead, “Blaine? Hello?”

He rounds the corner and almost runs into Blaine’s hunched back. He’s taking up as little space as possible, right side pasted to the brick wall of the IHOP, arms wrapped around his own waist like an invisibility cloak. Past the arc of his back, Kurt sees an alleyway that extends to the next street and onwards into the darkness. A streetlight flickers in the distance to its own syncopated rhythm, and, in front of it all, there’s Blaine’s huddled body. Kurt can’t see his face and he doesn’t turn around, even when Kurt jerks back with alarm.

“Oh,” he breathes out a puff of white into the cold air. “Your coat is— it’s dark.” He sounds idiotic, but what can he say to say to a man he hardly knows who refuses to look at him?

Blaine mutters something into his scarf, down towards his shoes. When Kurt leans in to listen, he repeats himself over and over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says, voice soft and broken. “I didn’t mean for it to be too much. We were having such a good time and then I had to bring up the scrapbook and that— Marc said it was too much, but I thought because it wasn’t really you and it wasn’t really me that it would be ok this time, but—“ He looks up, wide-eyed into Kurt’s face, and he’s shaking. “Should I—? I should go back and tell her that the book wasn’t really for you. I could say that it was for someone else or that it never really happened.” He stares back down at the ground, mouth open in concentration, mind churning behind his furrowed brow. Kurt wants to jump in and offer something— anything— but doesn’t know where to start. The words coming out of Blaine’s mouth make sense, but he can’t follow the logic.

He sets one hand, gingerly on Blaine’s shoulder and says, carefully, “Did I say something? Maybe about bisexuality?”

“No!” Blaine jumps in almost before he finishes the sentence. “You were wonderful!” His eyes soften and Kurt sees a trace of a smile under the panic. “Everyone was— they were wonderful, but I just ruined everything. The stories were funny, but then I had to go and make it all creepy with the scrapbook, and I didn’t even realize it until your friend said something. I’m really, really sorry for ruining your night with your brother.” Blaine isn’t terrified anymore. Instead of jumping from thought to thought, he’s just calmly explaining the situation, like a dog owner explaining a problem behavior to the new trainer. Somehow Kurt finds this new, calm Blaine even more baffling.

“Ruin?” Kurt asks. “What did you ruin? And do you mean Santana, because she full of—“

Before he can explain the many problems with Santana Lopez, the sound of the door opening echoes from around the corner and he hears her voice, followed by the sound of another set of shoes crunching through the settled layer of snow.

“Don’t question me,” she snaps. “I know from the gays, and Bilbo didn’t look at our friendly neighborhood elf like an ‘old friend.’ I could see the heart eyes from space, Hudson. From space.”

“I don’t know.” Finn says. He sounds like he’s thinking through each word before it comes out of his mouth. “Blaine seems like a good guy. Maybe he was just there for Kurt when he needed some support. I know I wasn’t always brother of the year material.” Kurt can actually hear the shrug in Finn’s voice. He wants to step out of the shadows and pull his brother into a bear hug, but Blaine’s in no condition to be dragged into the light.

He’s plastered himself against the outside wall of the restaurant and the panic is back, etched into the wide lines around his eyes. He looks. . . hunted, and Kurt can’t imagine what scenario in Blaine’s mind could turn Finn Hudson into a predator.

Santana’s voice rises again as it moves closer to their corner. “Think what you want, but if you want to win that award any time in the next century I wouldn’t call him right now. Kurt’s probably somewhere nice and warm with his tongue down that cute little hobbit throat and his hand—“

“Thank you, Santana!” Finn sounds about as panicked as Blaine looks. “I will take that horrifying image into consideration.”

They’re getting closer now, and Kurt realizes belatedly that he and Blaine are standing directly between the oncoming voices and the spot, behind them, where Finn parked his car. He briefly considers saying something, loud and jokey before they round the corner. He could easily ride out the awkwardness of the evening and then disappear back into Manhattan until all is forgotten, but Blaine— he looks back at the man frozen against the brick wall and makes the only choice he knows.

He steps towards the alleyway, peers into the darkness, and then turns back into Blaine’s wide gaze. Before he can think of why, he reaches down to wrap his fingers around Blaine’s left wrist and tugs, gently. “Hey old friend?” he whispers. “Want to make the night a little longer?” Kurt bites his lip and glances back down the alleyway as the voices grow louder.

Please Blaine, he thinks. Please just trust me. I don’t know what I’m doing, but trust me anyway.

Blaine follows his gaze down the alley and back to the point where his wrist meets Kurt’s hand. They both have small wrists, or at least, small for their size, but Kurt’s fingers are long and they reach almost all the way around to touch on the other side. They envelop him, and Kurt can feel every tiny bone in his wrist twitch and shift as Blaine stares, jaw dropped. As he watches, Blaine’s face falls open into a drunken gut-punch of emotion that Kurt cannot name.

He stares at his own wrist like he no longer recognizes the limb and then—slowly—looks up to meet Kurt’s eyes.

He nods—eyes blown with a wordless plea—and something in Kurt gives way. A wall tumbles open in his mind and somehow he knows that he won’t be able to build it up again. He doesn’t know what the wall was or where he will be if he steps through its gaping wound of brick and dust. He only knows that it’s gone, replaced by the seared image of Blaine’s eyes and the pull of his wrist under the pads of Kurt’s fingertips.

Snow crunches around the corner and Blaine blinks into Kurt’s eyes. Open. Steady. Together, they take a breath, and run into the darkness.


	5. People Like Us

“Stop!” Kurt gasps, halfway between a laugh and a cough. “Just a minute.” He leans forward, one hand on his knee and the other on his chest as he tries to suck in the cold air. A pain cuts into his side and he wonders just how long it’s been since he went for a proper jog.

It’s some consolation that Blaine’s out of breath too. He’s still standing though, and bouncing a bit on his toes, as though any minute he might take off again into the patchy night. Blaine’s eyes shine in the streetlight’s fluorescent glow as he looks down and grins at Kurt’s pain.

“Waiting! Where else would I go?” He glances down the darkened, empty street, lined with hazy buildings in brown and grey. “Do you even know where we are? Because I don’t have a clue.”

Kurt squints up at what he can see of the street through the haze, and giggles. Something about the building with the peaks above the doors looks familiar and he’s sure he’ll recognize it when he can catch his breath, but for now it all seems unbelievably silly. He catches Blaine’s eye with a look that says “Fuck if I know!” and suddenly they’re both laughing like little boys in the falling snow, adrenaline drunk and gripping their own sides to catch their breath.

He can’t tell if they’ve been running for miles or minutes. He only remembers the tug of Blaine’s weight under his hands as they ran through the chill air, the dark streets punctuated by patches of flickering light. When Kurt looked back, he’d found Blaine smiling up into the wind, scarf tails flying back over his shoulders like a puppy leaning out the car window.

Somewhere amidst the alleyways and salted sidewalks, Blaine had caught up with him and then taken the lead, until Kurt had been chasing behind. They’d been connected at his hand and Blaine’s wrist, but Blaine still peeked back every few steps, as if to check whether Kurt was still there. Maybe he was checking whether Kurt was actually real. As he giggles down into the snow, Kurt understands the feeling.

Still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, Blaine offers an arm up and Kurt takes it, hoisting himself up from his crouch, and letting goose bumps ripple up his arm. Apparently, he can’t touch this man without turning into a shuddering mess. He tries to imagine how the Kurt-from-a-year-ago might react to him now, and he blushes at the thought. Old Kurt, the Kurt with fancy Andrew and his elegant hands, would have pronounced him “amusingly childish.”

He watches Blaine pull his scarf around his neck, and likes to think that old Kurt also would have been a little jealous.

“We aren’t far from my hotel,” he says, with more confidence than he feels. “If we follow this street, I think we’ll get there eventually.“ He starts walking roughly in the direction he remembers from the drive in, but Blaine doesn’t follow.

“Hotel?” Kurt turns back to find Blaine with his hands in his pockets and his eyebrows arched. “And I thought I was being forward—“

Kurt’s heart goes to his throat for a second, until he sees the crinkles at the corners of Blaine’s eyes. “Oh, no no no,” Kurt smiles. “I’m a gentleman. I also happen to be living at a hotel for the time being, while I help Jackie Collins during the ‘Columbus leg’ of their tour.” Blaine huffs a laugh at the air quotes and starts walking towards him, a skip in his step.

They walk slowly down the snowy sidewalk and Kurt continues, “Everyone else lives in Columbus or Cincinnati and I am not sleeping on Finn’s floor, so it’s the Varsity Inn, for me.”

“Not much next to New York?”

Kurt never actually told Blaine about where he was from, did he? Blaine shrugs by way of apology. “Finn said something about his little brother making it big in the Big Apple.”

“I don’t know about anything so glamorous,” Kurt rolls his eyes, “but I’m an actor, a waiter and about half a dozen other things.” He reaches across Blaine’s body to shake his hand as formally as he can muster in mid-stride. “Kurt Hummel, nice to meet you. Now, why don’t you walk back with me to my hotel where I have my car, and we can get you back to wherever you came from, hmm?”

“Ohio State.” Blaine’s smirking again and it’s almost painfully pretty.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s where I came from. Or, at least a dorm in Ohio State. Theater major, Blaine Anderson at your service,” he says and gives a little wave. Kurt feels the blood drain from his cheeks. How old is this kid?

Blaine snorts and ducks his head. “Stop looking at me like that!” he grins. “I’m a senior! And you can only be, what, one or two years out of college?”

“One,” Kurt says ruefully, “but it was a very active year.”

“Of course,” Blaine nods, “and I want to learn from your wisdom, oh great elder, starting with that bedazzler I heard something about back there—“

“Over my dead body.”

“If you insist,” Blaine says, leaning against a streetlight. He looks up through his lashes in a way that Kurt would almost call coy, “but I can think of better ways of getting to know you.”

Kurt lifts an eyebrow and gives Blaine a second to realize what he just said.

“I--” Blaine blushes to the roots under his gaze. “I was thinking about questions, like a party game. You ask and then I ask— it’ll be fun!”

“Oh my god, you are a theater boy.” Kurt tries to slap him on the arm, but Blaine ducks out the way and around the light. “Go ahead and ask, but I’m not going to start playing zip zap zop out here.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Now, what’s a good question for my friend, the mysterious older man?” Blaine pushes away from the light and walks backwards down the sidewalk, so he can give his “friend” the consideration he apparently deserves. For his part, Kurt feels like the happiest lab specimen in all of Ohio.

“I’ll start easy. What’s your favorite drink?”

Blaine opens his hands, as if passing the question his way, and Kurt has to force himself to keep walking. Easy question, indeed. He has a sudden image of the Black Devil Martini that was once his favorite drink because it was his favorite drink. Andrew loved the Devil more for how it looked in his hand than for the rum or vermouth. There was something elegant about the jaunty angle of the skewered olive against the glass. And he loved how the name tripped off of his tongue in a crowded bar.

Exquisite.

Kurt wonders if it’s strange that he has a stronger emotional memory of the drink than of Andrew, but that’s beside the point. They’ve only been broken up for three weeks, half of which he’s spent in a hotel in Columbus, drinking crappy beer with his brother’s band. He hasn’t had time to come up with a new favorite drink.

“The Moscow Mule,” he says, because he likes the sound as it rolls off of his tongue. He doesn’t even like ginger beer. “And you?”

“Nuh uh,” Blaine shakes finger in Kurt’s direction. “You can’t ask the same question back. That’s against the rules. Aren’t you a theater boy too?”

“I may have missed the finer points,” Kurt sniffs. “I don’t know, how about pets? Did you have a childhood pet?”

“Nope,” Blaine says, in a singsong. “No pets outside of glass bowls. My brother was allergic or they didn’t want hair on the furniture. I was never sure. Favorite song from a musical?”

“Are you serious?” He just asked a nice, easy question and he gets THAT?

“Yep, and I’m going to count down so you don’t have too much time to think about it.”

“Wait!” This feels oddly personal, even more than the drink, because he can’t blame Andrew for anything this time.

“Three.” Blaine’s true to his word and he starts counting down, marking each number with a wave of his fingers. Kurt, of course, panics. For years his favorite song was “Defying Gravity,” but that was lifetimes ago. Then it would have been something from Les Mis but—

“Two.” Blaine looks far too proud of himself.

Before he can finish the countdown, Kurt surprises himself and starts singing [the first song that comes to mind.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ori9QgRIol0)

_Always wanted to see the lights of Broadway._  
 _I always wanted to see the traffic roar._  
 _I always wanted to be a part of New York City’s great big heart,_  
 _and now I am. I couldn’t ask for—_

He sings just above a whisper, and he’s as surprised as anyone else about the lyrics.

 _I was that boy. I’m all of them_ , he continues, speak-singing into Blaine’s wide, sad eyes, and into their private snow globe of a night.

_Trapped in a room full of shadows and not enough light._  
 _And soon we will fade into these walls, into nothingness._  
 _The end._

He stops, readying an apology, until Blaine picks up the next line.

 _People like us: we get through the day, surviving the city way better than most._ _We go through the motions from nightcap to nightcap:_ _Here but not here. With the heart of a ghost._

Blaine eases into the melody, like a performer testing the microphone and his voice is honey. It glides over the notes and makes them his home.

Blaine pauses and, in the silence, his eyes ask permission. Kurt gives a tiny nod, and when Blaine continues he joins in. It feels like a dream, but it’s too hard to tell where the dream begins and the real world ends. On the rise to where do we belong, Kurt gestures them to a close, like a conductor. They hold their collective breath for a second, waiting for their next cue, but the silence isn’t heavy. In fact, Kurt feels almost giddy.

This time, Blaine breaks the moment with an appreciative bob of his head. “Nice choice,” he says. “Were you in _Wild Party_?”

“No such luck. I just worship at the feet of Toni Collette.”

“Don’t we all.” Blaine gestures towards the snowy sidewalk ahead, as though holding open a door. With a small smile, Kurt steps through, and they’re back, walking shoulder to shoulder through the darkness.


	6. Signs

“Favorite movie!” Kurt says. He’s getting better. He’s learning how to ask questions that will elicit a side-glance and an easy smile.

“That’s easy, but you have to promise not to tease me.”

“I would never!” Blaine shoots him a dubious look. “Ok, so I would, but in this case I won’t. Your secret love of _Gigli_ is safe with me.”

“Kurt.”

“Or is it From _Justin to Kelly_?”

“What? Where did you even—?” Blaine shakes his head, incredulous.

“If it’s _Glitter_ , I’m not making any promises.” Kurt cannot be held responsible for his actions if someone loves the worst movie ever written, even if said man is currently blushing a beautiful, rosy pink.

“KURT.”

“Ok,” he says, with a long-enduring sigh, “but you should know that I’m making a special exception, Blaine Anderson. Because you’re special.” He scratches Blaine’s shoulder, a light touch through layers of winter wool, but Blaine puffs up under the touch.

“Of course I am.”

For nearly an hour they’ve lazily walked their way back towards the hotel, slowly building a clearer picture of each other’s separate lives. For a question about “special places,” Blaine talked about boxing, and Kurt had to contain his surprise, not to mention more than a little arousal. Blaine described the quiet hum of the exercise equipment before the rush of student bodies, and Kurt was sure that he’d never heard anything quite so romantic about a room drenched in flop sweat and stale Gatorade.

For his part, Blaine got him to talk about _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ at NYADA, which lived up to its name, and about the walking nightmare that was his first— and only— show on Broadway. Thus far. He could almost hear Rachel’s voice in his head repeating how “this is only the beginning Kurt” and “you’re making wonderful stories for your first talk show appearance.” But that’s hard to remember when you have to sit down and write _Cougar: The Musical_ on your resume.

Yes, he was on Broadway for months and his dad was so proud that he almost posted a neon sign on the garage, but— oh god— the show. “Picture this,” he said. “Three disillusioned women develop a taste for hot, young men. They let their inner cougar roar and purr in a carnal frenzy, finding self-love and empowerment in the process. Do you have any idea of how bad that must have been?”

Blaine nodded.

That show had been worse than Blaine could possibly imagine. Still, he enjoyed the hell out of his brassy co-stars, and he’d met Andrew. Andrew had been a chorus boy in Aladdin at the time, and he had such pretty lips. Kurt doesn’t even recall who bought the first drink that night, but as Kurt pushed him against wall and kissed his way down his neck, or later when he’d unbuttoned his own pants and arched into Andrew’s lithe body, he instinctively knew that they were stunning. At any moment from first drink to post-coital shudder, a photographer could have taken a picture and used it to sell something in European Vogue — something expensive.

With Andrew, Kurt felt like walking, fucking artwork and for 8 months that was enough. They were the center in an otherwise chaotic whirl. And there’s no pressure, no urgency at the center of the storm. They attended openings and wine tastings dressed to the nines and went days without calling if things got busy, and Kurt never really needed Andrew for anything.

Of course, Kurt didn’t say any of that.

He chattered away about dancing with female leads twice his age, and ignored the way that his stomach dove when Blaine made up his own dance for a “cougar on the prowl.”

He’s still lingering on the mental image of Blaine shaking his booty and peeking over his shoulder, when the voice that belongs to the booty jolts him back to present.

“The only movie that could possibly capture the spirit of whimsy and surprising depth that I look for in quality cinema is,” he turns with a flourish. “Kurt, may I have a drumroll please?”

“No, you may not.”

“Fine,” Blaine says, throwing his arms up in an exaggerated huff. “It’s _The Princess Bride_. Are you happy, mood killer?”

Kurt barks out a laugh. “Not even remotely. I expected something profound or at least horrible. _Princess Bride_ is just--” he waves his hand in search of the word. “—cliché.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Blaine shuffles his shoes as he walks, looking the part of the petulant child.

“‘As you wish’ doesn’t have to be cliche?”

“Actually no,” Blaine says. Kurt starts to poke back, but something about the cast of Blaine’s gaze makes him pause. He’s still smiling, but the crinkles around his eyes are gone, replaced by a vulnerability that fits his scuffling feet. He suddenly looks so young.

“I know it’s silly, but I’ve always . . . liked that line or at least what it says about Wesley and Buttercup, together.” He blinks up as he says their names, as if testing the waters. Kurt wonders if someone else, a hideous someone, would have laughed.

Blaine goes on, gaining confidence as he feels his way through his thoughts. “Other people always talk about the pirates and giants, but that first part, with just the two of them always feels like the fantasy for me. Just imagine, Kurt, a place where you always know exactly how to make someone perfectly happy. I know that he’s her servant and that makes the whole relationship . . . problematic, but still--” He sighs a happy hum down at his feet. “It’s perfect.”

Kurt hums back something that sounds affirmative and not too interested because, if Kurt’s honest with himself, he’s fascinated.

“It isn’t like I want to be someone’s slave or anything,” Blaine says, lightly. Kurt almost swallows his tongue at the thought of Blaine in leather, but he’s still talking. “I just wish people could be more like Buttercup and say exactly what they want. We could all walk around with little dry erase boards or neon signs and everything would be so much easier.”

“But wouldn’t seeing everything in black and white kill the mystery? Directness is nice, but I’d rather not start a relationship with a sign that says, ‘nice ass babycakes.’”

Blaine laughs, low and throaty, but his eyes are still elsewhere. “I don’t think so,” he says, slowly. “I don’t think it would kill anything because, think about it--” He’s talking fast again and with his hands. Kurt can’t look away. “If your sign for me said that you wanted a glass of water, I would lose all of that water-related mystery, but there’s so many things I still wouldn’t know about you! I wouldn’t know why you wanted water instead of, I don’t know, coffee. And I wouldn’t know why you wanted me to be the one to get the water for you.”

He looks up, right into Kurt’s eyes and smiles a wide, open grin. “There’s still so many mysteries about Kurt Hummel, but at least you’d have your water.”

“Hydration is important for this skin.” Kurt grins back, more confidently than he feels. He wants to say, “I understand,” or something equally reassuring, but it would be such a lie. He doesn’t understand, not Blaine’s wish and not the desire thrumming and beating under his own skin.

He wants that, wants that world of direction and clarity, even if he has no idea what he would do with it. He can almost hear his father’s laugh at the thought of his son willingly following orders. Left to a world of signs, he would probably ignore everyone and write a musical celebrating his independence. As for his own sign--- Kurt tries to imagine words in front of his body, on his clothes or a sandwich board, and nothing comes. He’s wordless.

That doesn’t mean wish-less or desire-less. He’s never been that. If anything, Kurt Hummel has always been a living ball of ambition and desire, but to put that desire into words? How would he even start? He tries not to consider the fact that even if he had a sign, no one outside of his own flesh and blood would want to see it.

He wants to say, “I understand,” but instead he says, “It’s your turn to ask a question.”

Blaine steps away, eyes stung. “True,” he says with a weak smile, “most iconic movie moment?”

“Isn’t that a bit similar to my question, Mr. Rulebook?”

“Perhaps, but I think we can make an exception.”

Kurt smirks and pokes Blaine in the shoulder. “Ok, but that means you have to answer too.” Blaine nods, tightly, eyes on the ground. He doesn’t poke back.

For the first time, Kurt understands the absence of a sign. He doesn’t have the words to say, please go back five minutes so that I can make everything better, so he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he steps forward, faster than Blaine’s slow, easy gait and spins into the falling snow, head tilted up and eyes almost closed.

He can still see Blaine’s face as he turns, and he’s confused, until his eyes light up with recognition. “Oh! I need a hint. Did you just escape from jail?”

“What? No. Blaine!” Kurt stops spinning and plants his hands on his hips.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine smiles, not at all sorry. “It could have been the end of _Shawshank Redemption_.”

Kurt honestly couldn’t care less about the guess, insulting as it may be. Blaine’s eyes are smiling again. He rolls his eyes. “Excuse me, but Andy Dufresne wasn’t spinning. Try again and aim for the Alps.”

He starts spinning again and Blaine giggles. “Of course. You’re Maria at the beginning of _The Sound of Music_. The snow ruins the effect.”

“It does,” Kurt says, wobbling back into step, “but the spirit of Julie Andrews always finds a way. Your turn.”

“Yes sir.” Blaine offers a mock salute and then holds out both hands for Kurt to stop walking, just as they step under the awning of Kurt’s hotel. When Kurt stops, he steps forward into the middle of the next sidewalk square, turns back, and stretches one arm to point straight towards Kurt’s nose. He stares with theatrical intensity down his arm, into Kurt’s eyes, and nods. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Kurt takes his time. He walks around Blaine’s posed body, taking in the turn of his hip and the defined turn of his jaw line. Blaine had trouble holding his smolder, but he remains still and focused under Kurt’s methodical inspection. From behind, Kurt thinks, it doesn’t look so much like Blaine’s pointing, so much as like he’s holding something.

Wait a minute.

“Blaine.” Kurt marches back to where he started to find his model cracking a smile. “That’s cheating. You can’t choose a scene from the same movie. And no, you can’t move. Stay there.”

Blaine stays, still giggling. “It’s iconic, and there’s no stopping the persistence of Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to—“

“I know. I know, but you did it wrong!” Kurt grabs a hold of Blaine’s compact, firm waist and turns it ninety degrees. “You might have gone to the fancy private school, but I took stage combat, and that’s not how anyone without a death wish holds a sword. You have to turn your body away from the opponent so that—“ He reaches up to Blaine’s shoulders to turn them his way and for the first time since he’s moved Blaine’s body, he sees his face.

And he cannot breath.

Blaine is—he’s trembling. His wide eyes stare into Kurt’s face as if he cannot comprehend Kurt’s hands as they skim the edges of his body. Kurt would have to go down through two, three layers of winter clothing for skin to touch skin, and yet, out here in the cold, moving Blaine’s body into position and saying “stay” feels as intimate as a caress. He could be standing bare in the airport, and he wouldn’t feel more naked than he does under those stunned, scared eyes. And he hadn’t even noticed; he had given an order and Blaine had followed, like breathing.

He slowly pulls his hands back, away from Blaine’s shoulders. He’s still staring. They both are.

“You--” he stutters. “You can stop now.” Blaine lowers his hand holding Inigo’s imaginary sword and nods, a quick jerk of the head that hurts deep in Kurt’s gut. Later, he will think that it was that pain that made him do something incredibly, perfectly stupid.

“Blaine,” Kurt grabs for his hand, only to drop it again as Blaine looks up, bare confusion in his eyes. “I don’t know if this is right, but--” he takes in an unsteady breath, steps back, and holds out his hands on either side of his body. “I want you to imagine that this is my sign. Yes,” he smiles as Blaine’s mouth drops, “I have a sign and it says that I want you to kiss me. Is that--”

He closes his eyes to finish the thought, but Blaine’s already pushed forward. He presses his lips, softly, to the right edge of Kurt’s mouth and then again to his lips, dry and warm. They touch with closed mouths, holding their breath, and it takes a moment for Kurt to realize that Blaine is waiting. He’s leaning up into Kurt’s body, almost shaking with energy, and just waiting for his next cue.

It is the single sexiest thing that anyone has ever done. God, he wants to grab Blaine’s jacket and push him up against the front of the hotel, shove a thigh between his legs and make him come through his chinos, but they have laws against that sort of thing in the midwest.

Instead, Kurt opens his mouth and breaths him in.

They knock noses and teeth as Kurt angles his head, but all he can focus on is pressure, pressure and the taste of Blaine. He tastes like sweat and boy, but also the last tinges of maple syrup lingering on the tongue. Kurt licks a swipe along the back of Blaine’s teeth and Blaine echoes the gesture. He echoes every gesture, taste for taste, push for push, until Kurt feels his knees weakening with need.

He hasn’t touched Blaine, not with his hands. They remain limp at his sides, and, of course, so do Blaine’s. They’re both shaking as Kurt steps back, the separating smack of their lips echoing in the silence.

“I want to go upstairs,” Kurt breaths, running one hand down the sleeve of Blaine jacket, “and I want you to come with me.”

“Okay,” Blaine whispers. “Okay.”


	7. Mine

Kurt doesn’t think he can go through with it until his flailing limbs almost ruin everything. They’re taking the stairs to Kurt’s room in charged silence, when Kurt suddenly trips over his own feet.

He’s headed for a face plant into the carpet, but Blaine steps up from behind and catches him by the elbow.

“Careful there,” Blaine says, with a little smile and keeps walking on ahead, as if he has any idea where they’re going. He peeks back down the stairwell to where Kurt stands. “You coming?”

That’s when it hits him. Blaine doesn’t care. Blaine knows that he’s a spaz. His limbs are too lanky and he trips over air, but Blaine wants him anyway. The idea that he might want Kurt, in some part, because of his less elegant qualities is too much to comprehend. This strong, graceful, confident man has probably seen more of Kurt’s stupid, toothy grin than Andrew did in eight months, but he wants Kurt to be his—his--.

If he shapes their something into solid words, it might shatter, so he doesn’t finish the thought. Instead, he catches up to Blaine’s retreating form and places a hand on the small of his back. Blaine sucks in a tiny breath as Kurt’s thumb traces the dip in his spine and pushes him, ever so slightly, forward and towards the landing.

At the hotel door, Kurt slips in the key until he sees the green light, while Blaine looks around the hallway with a sheepish grin, like a kid sneaking into the teacher’s lounge. His face glows with giddy anticipation and Kurt just wants to pull him in—but no. That isn’t what Blaine wants, and more than anything Kurt wants to get this right.

He opens the hotel room door and turns before Blaine can follow him in. “Wait,” he says. “I want you to wait here.” Blaine nods.

Inside the room, Kurt’s thinks he might puke. Shit. He thinks about screaming into a pillow, but that would make noise, so he just goes into the bathroom and stares into the mirror, willing the boy on the other side to get it together. He leans in over the marble sink and looks himself in the eyes. For Blaine, he can be strong and—for one night—he can just want everything.

Kurt shakes himself, hard, for good measure and the jolt straightens his spine. He turns on a single lamp, turns to face the closed door, and clears his throat. He can do this.

“Come in,” he calls, and thanks God that his voice doesn’t crack. “You can come in!” He tries, a little louder, and the door inches open with a squeak. Blaine peeks around the edge and takes in the room. He looks awestruck and curious at the same time; it’s adorable.

“I want you to come in,” Kurt says, more softly, and Blaine steps in, closing the door behind him.

Kurt tries to follow the script in his head, the one he’s been writing since they stepped through the hotel doors. Next there was supposed to be kneeling--- or maybe candle wax—but he doesn’t have any candles, and he can’t think about what he’s supposed to be doing when Blaine’s looking at him like he’s Christmas morning. He’s the tree and the tinsel and all of the presents, just waiting to be unwrapped.

“Please,” he says, voice low. “Just tell me,” and then Kurt isn’t acting any more.

“Back against the wall,” he says and it comes out as an order.

Blaine starts backing up before the words are fully out of Kurt’s mouth. He skids back into the wall with a thump and presses his hands into the front of his thighs, as if to hold himself in place.

Kurt steps forward, allows himself to stare a path up Blaine’s body one inch at a time, mapping each hint of exposed skin. It’s so close to perfect-- he places a hand on each of Blaine’s wrists and pulls them out towards either side, until he’s pressed, spread-eagle and panting against the wall.

With a push, Kurt releases Blaine’s wrists and rests his palms against either side of Blaine’s head.

“Stay there,” he whispers, and there is no question that Blaine will stay. Right now, he looks like he would kill if it would make Kurt happy.

Kurt leans in slowly, and with more control that he’s ever known, presses a soft kiss against the center of Blaine’s forehead, dry and possessive. Blaine gasps and Kurt moves down, laying a trail of kisses, like brands, down the side of his neck.

The skin gives, and he feels muscles tense under his lips, under the salty sweat and the scent of Blaine’s vibrating body. When he reaches Blaine’s shoulder, he shifts the scarf and polo to one side, drawing his lips along the sharp rise of Blaine’s clavicle and flicking out his tongue to lay claim on his bones. When Blaine shudders and ducks his head, reaching for Kurt’s mouth, Kurt presses a flat palm against the center of his stomach and forces him back into the wall.

“No,” he murmurs against Blaine’s cheek, “not yet. I don’t want that yet.” He leans in closer, pressing their chests together through their winter coats, and whispers into the shell of his ear, “Is this what you want?”

Blaine nods quickly into Kurt’s shoulder.

That isn’t enough. He needs more. “No,” Kurt says, a little louder, “Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” Blaine whispers, and Kurt feels a surge of pride.

Blaine follows his movements with his eyes as Kurt forces himself to step back and open up a gap between their bodies. He reaches to grab Blaine’s right hand from against the wall and places it at his own throat, where his scarf and jacket meet. “Take it off,” he says, and he feels himself blush red. “Take all of it off.”

Blaine hesitates for half a second, hands hovering at Kurt’s neck, and then he flies. He works the buttons through the buttonholes on Kurt’s jacket and unwinds his scarf with veneration, folding each piece and placing it in a row in front of his feet. Of course, Kurt thinks, he never had to tell Blaine to be gentle. When he reaches Kurt’s shirt, his fingers skim the bottom edge with a nervous flutter and, for the first time, his eyes don’t know where to land. You don’t have to do this, Kurt thinks, we can stop, but Blaine takes a deep breath and lifts the shirt over Kurt’s head.

As the shirt pulls away, Kurt looks down and his mouth goes dry.

Blaine’s dropped to the floor at Kurt’s feet, so close that he can feel the puff of Blaine’s breath on the inseam of his pants, fast and tight. Blaine reaches up with both hands towards the button on Kurt’s fly, and it takes everything in Kurt’s power to stop those hands before he loses control.

“Wait.” The hands still, and Blaine looks up, long eyelashes framing rapt anticipation. “You’re doing so well, sweetheart, but you don’t get to do that just yet. Besides,” he tilts Blaine’s head up with one finger. “You’re still wearing too many layers.”

He leans away and pushes up against Blaine’s jaw. “Stand up,” he says, calm and firm. “Turn away and place your hands against the wall. I’m going to help you with that problem.”

Blaine spins around without a word and leans until his hands hit the plaster. It takes a second for Kurt to realize that Blaine hasn’t adjusted his feet because that wasn’t part of the order. Instead, he stands just far enough away to touch the wall, but only if he bends himself in half to get there.

As he leans forward, his winter coat rides up and Kurt can just see the rounded rise of Blaine’s ass poised over his widespread legs. A jolt of _wanttakehave_ hits low and needy in his gut and before he can think, he’s draped his bare chest over Blaine’s back, wrapped his arms down around his body, and started undressing Blaine from behind.

Blaine’s breath goes shallow as the cotton and wool of his jacket falls off and puddles around their feet. When the scarf drops, Kurt slips his hands under the front hem of Blaine’s polo and drags them achingly slowly up Blaine’s chest, pulling the shirt along like an afterthought. Blaine shudders when Kurt’s thumbs skim the hard peaks of his nipples, but he holds still, even when Kurt pops the button on the front of his pants and eases the zipper open until it refuses to go any further.

“You’re such a good boy,” he whispers into the warm dip between Blaine’s shoulder blades. “So beautiful, Blaine. I want to reward you for being so good.”

He allows his right hand to slide forward, along the top edge of Blaine pants and down into his open fly. He curses his shaking fingertips as he traces Blaine’s hard length through his briefs. It must have hurt so much in those pants, and Kurt wonders if Blaine liked that, liked the pain of waiting until Kurt was ready.

While his right fingertips trace torturous circles around the head of Blaine’s cock, his left hand fingers the gap at the back of Blaine’s pants and pushes in, past his underwear and down the cleft of his bare ass. The open fly leaves enough room for one hand to fit in, but it’s tight as he pushes all the way around and back up again, down and back until Blaine’s panting down at the floor and pushing back into Kurt’s palm.

“That’s good?” Kurt dips two fingers in to rub against Blaine’s rim, and Blaine’s knees buckle at the contact.

“Yes. _OhgodyesKurtplease_.”

Kurt keeps tugging and pushing, against Blaine’s rim and against the vein underneath his cock. He wants to look, wants to watch his own hand disappear into the cleft of Blaine’s ass, but he knows if he looks he will come in his pants like a fifteen-year-old. The hot pressure of Blaine’s ass as he rocks back and forth between Kurt’s hands is enough send him dangerously close to the edge.

“Blaine,” he breathes, “you know we can’t do that.” He pushes, hard into the resistance of Blaine’s hole and Blaine whines up at the ceiling. “No condoms, my dear. I wasn’t expecting to find someone—someone like you in Columbus, of all places.” He doesn’t have to see Blaine’s face to know that he’s smiling, and something swells deep in his chest. “But I promise you, Blaine Anderson, I do not need a condom to take you apart.”

Blaine shudders with what could be anticipation or laughter. “Yes sir,” he says and the joy is still in his voice. It’s perfect.

Starting with the back, Kurt peels Blaine’s pants and underwear down to his ankles in one firm tug, and leaves them there, holding Blaine in place like cotton cuffs.

“I want you to turn around.”

Blaine follows the command, and when he turns Kurt can see his eyes, wide, blown, and open, ready for absolutely anything. Kurt presses into his chest, and Blaine hits the wall with a thud and a moan. He thrusts forward into open air, cock red and throbbing, but Kurt slams his hips back against the wall.

“No, honey. Not yet,” Kurt whispers. “Watch me,” and walks backward until he feels the back of his knees hit the end of the bed.

Even if his eyes were closed, he would be able to feel Blaine’s eyes burning holes into his hands as he pulls down his own pants and underwear, and turns to pull a bottle of lube from his suitcase. He’d be able to feel Blaine watching him lean back onto his elbow and spread his legs wide towards where he’s standing, but his eyes are wide open and so are Blaine’s. Oh god, Blaine’s eyes are open. They’re locked on Kurt’s glistening palm as he reaches between his legs and starts touching himself in long leisurely strokes.

“You can look,” Kurt smiles, and slowly fucks into his own hand, “but you can’t touch me and you can’t touch yourself, not until you show me that you can be good.”

“That’s what you want.” It isn’t a question.

“That’s what I want.”

Blaine shudders into a nod and forces his palms flat against the wall. “Okay.”

Kurt nods back and quickens the hand on his cock. He’s never—performed before, let alone for a man who looks like he would die to push Kurt back on the bed and suck him dry. He twists his fist under Blaine’s hungry gaze, and the sensation ripples up in waves. It’s all that he can do not to drag him down and force him into the mattress.

“If we had supplies,” Kurt gasps, thrusting up into his tight fist, “you wouldn’t ever touch this bed, Mr. Anderson.” Blaine sucks in a gulp of air and squeezes his eyes shut. “You would wait until I knew that you had been good and then I’d bend you over the arm of the sofa. Would you scream for me Blaine?”

“Yes,” Blaine whispers. “Yes please yes.” His mouth drops open, and his tongue swipes out to trace his bottom lip.

“I could tie you up, Blaine. Would you like that?” Kurt drops his head back and lets the words fall out of his gasping mouth. “Would you like scarves and a little leather so that you can’t move?”

“Yes-- yessir.”

“You would just have to be open for me and take it over and over again until you can’t come anymore. Is that what you want?”

Blaine whimpers up at the ceiling, “Please, Kurt. I—I can’t--“ Kurt sees his cock, throbbing and twitching in front of his body, and his hands, white from pushing back into the wall. Right now, Blaine needs him.

“Sweetheart,” he says, still firm, “take those off now.” He gestures to the pants tangled around Blaine’s legs, and when he holds out his hands, Blaine falls forward into his lap, an easy drop, like puzzle pieces sliding into place. He wraps his legs around Kurt’s back and gasps as Kurt grips his ass with both hands, pulling him closer until Kurt can feel Blaine’s heart beating into his own chest.

“Hold out your hand.” Kurt squeezes lube into the center of Blaine’s palm before moving Blaine’s hand between their bodies to wrap around both of them, together. Kurt’s brain stutters out at the touch. It’s too much, but he murmurs a breathy yesyesyes as Blaine tries out a slow jerk, first with one hand and then with both, mouth open in awe as their cocks disappear and reappear through the tight tunnel of Blaine’s warm palms.

Blaine tucks his face and moans frantic gibberish into the crook of Kurt neck, rolling his hips up into his own hands in sharp, thrusts. They come close to a rhythm, but it rips apart in the stutter of Blaine’s frantic hips and the press of Kurt’s nails into the weight of Blaine’s ass. In Kurt’s whispers of “Wait wait wait, honey. Not yet.”

They kiss through raw, guttural groans, until Kurt open his eyes into Blaine’s wrecked face. He shudders and tries so desperately to hold himself together. Kurt could watch that beautiful face come apart forever.

“Yes,” he whispers, “yes, honey. You can come now.” It’s ok. You don’t have to be strong any more, and he’s not sure who he’s thinking that for when Blaine cries like he’s dying and curls into Kurt’s lap, shaking and coming and groaning into his chest.

Blaine’s still in tiny aftershocks when Kurt lets himself go, fucks up hard into Blaine’s loosening grip and feels something explode in his brain. He pours out over Blaine’s hands and muffles a sob in his shoulder.

Later, he’ll wonder why he almost started crying in a hotel room with a stunning, perfect man huddled in his lap, but now he doesn’t have the brainpower for anything more complicated than soft skin, beautiful boy, yes yes yes. He curls forward, enveloping Blaine’s body, and presses loose, messy kisses to his nose, the side of his mouth, to the loose curls at the edge of his hair and the sweaty shine of his forehead.

Mine mine mine.

For now. For this moment. But tomorrow—

_Mine._

He doesn’t think about tomorrow. Instead, he settles Blaine, fuzzy, happy, nuzzling Blaine down onto the pillow and gets up on wobbling legs to find something to clean them off.

Once the warm washcloth has been discarded to a corner of the bathroom, Kurt doesn’t think about his own reflection in the hotel mirror, loose-limbed, debauched, and utterly terrified. Why would he, when he has a bed full of hazy afterglow in the other room, just waiting for him to curl up and snuggle into an early-morning sleep.

“Blaine,” he whispers. “I set an alarm for 11 so that we can still eat breakfast, okay?”

Blaine’s eyes flicker open and then close again, with a happy sigh. “As you wish.”


	8. Heavy

Kurt wakes up to the Shirelles, played through the tinny speakers on the hotel alarm.

[ _Tonight you’re mine_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxxkwBQk_o). . . sneaks into his dreams and pulls him towards awareness. He comes quietly, blinking into the darkness and allowing his brain to remain as fuzzy as the dream he can no longer remember.

The Varsity Inn showerhead might be useless— Kurt had long since come to terms with his own high standards in bathroom appliances— but the window shades are exquisite. He supposes they get their greatest use from traveling administrators, men and women trying to make Ohio feel like the east coast. Still, they’re good at their job. It’s nearly noon, and only a sliver of cold light sneaks between the shades and stretches along the floor like a cat mid-yawn.

He feels his way towards the bathroom and it’s only when he gets back, and goes to ease himself back under the covers that he realizes Blaine isn’t in bed anymore. His half of the bed is flat, empty, and by the looks of it, hasn’t been used for hours. The sheets and blankets have been folded down with care and he can’t see a divot in the pillow to show where Blaine had slept. It’s gone, and as his eyes adjust to the half-light, Kurt sees that everything else Blaine had brought into the hotel has disappeared with him: no pile of clothes, no scarf, no shoes, and no warm body bundled under the covers.

Kurt sinks onto the bed, heavy with surprise and tries not to think about the fact that his first reaction was a rush of relief.

There had been times during the night before, when he’d touched Blaine’s wrist or turned their conversation on a dime, times when he’d felt like Blaine could read his mind. They’d fallen into sync so quickly that Kurt wasn’t sure where his half of the improv ended and Blaine’s began. Maybe, he thought, Blaine just read his mind again. Maybe he could feel Kurt’s terror and left before either of them had to deal with the next day.

Even in the tiny sliver of daylight, he knows that whatever that was last night can’t continue. He would have known even if Blaine had still been lying there, being beautiful. Kurt lives in New York and Blaine lives in Ohio. Practically, having a thing would be impossible, and long distance things— he can’t bring himself to think the word “relationships”— are difficult enough on their own. How can he even think about having a something with a man who, until yesterday, would have been just another face in a bar? How can even think about putting his life on hold for a stranger?

Kurt starts walking towards the curtains and, at the last minute, turns to pace back towards the bed. He settles into an uneasy rhythm, back and forth, grinding a path into the off-white carpet.

Blaine isn’t a stranger, he thinks. Of course he isn’t. Blaine’s unwrapped more pieces of his soul in one night than almost anyone in the state. Hell, Kurt can count the number of people in the country who know him better on one hand, and he’s known most of them his entire life. There isn’t a word for what they are— old friends who've just met. He has the sense, fluttering just out of view, that the rules of practical things don’t apply to whatever it is that they are.

Kurt stares at the wall where he’d held Blaine’s arms wide and folded himself around his body.

It had been so. . . intense doesn’t seem like a strong enough word for a man who made him feel remade from the inside out. “Intense” says mosh pits and acid trips, when he feels like he just grew a new set of internal organs, new skin made fresh under Blaine’s fingertips.

If he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the echo of the night before, snow, cold breath, and thrusting together into the empty spaces between their hands. Pictures of open lips and blushed skin flash behind his eyes like a broken photo carousel, but even as they cycle he can’t shake the sensation of Blaine’s weight in his hands. Kurt’s nerves remember the firm arc of his back and the heft of his bare body as he’d pulled Blaine forward, hard and tight against Kurt’s chest.

Most of all, he remembers holding Blaine’s weight as he’d stuttered up into Kurt’s hand. He could have dropped him. At any point in the night either one of them could have dropped whatever string held them together and walked away, but they didn’t, and the thought of that much inexplicable trust—-

He leans back against the wall, sinks down to the floor and pulls his knees in towards his chest. Suddenly, he feels too big for the room.

Kurt hasn’t put his whole weight on another person in— he can’t decide if it’s been weeks, months, or years. To be honest, he’s not sure if he’s had the weight to give. He’s been floating, maybe ever since he left Lima and started a beautiful new life in the sparkling city.

He’d dated, to be sure, and he supposes that he was good at it. He’d found stunning people, gone to picturesque places and looked the part of the young star on the rise . . And then there had been Andrew— gorgeous Andrew, who fed him sushi by candlelight and who had opinions about everything. His opinions changed by the day, but he always had them and sometimes Kurt had them too.

At the time, the whirl had been intoxicating, but now that he’s felt Blaine’s weight under his fingertips, he can’t ignore how his not-relationship with a stranger had more heft than the relationship they’d built up over months of cocktails and afternoon matinees. It wasn’t anyone’s fault really. They’d been perfectly matched, equal from beginning to end, but Andrew had never really needed him for anything. Perhaps that’s why they hadn’t actually broken up. They’d simply drifted apart, and neither of them had stopped it from happening because Andrew could have filled Kurt’s place in his life with any beautiful young thing. God, he could have filled the spot with a sexy lamp and Kurt’s not sure anyone would have noticed.

Kurt reaches up to brush his hair from his forehead and realizes that he’s crying. He finds tears streaming down his cheeks, and he knows that they aren’t for Andrew or Blaine. He’s crying for a version of himself he hasn’t seen since he left his father in the car at the airport five years ago.

He wipes at his eyes, but the tears keep coming. Last night, he thinks, was sexy and powerful, but it was also a terrifying mess, and his heart might beat out of his chest just thinking about it. Blaine had looked almost relieved when he’d dropped to his knees, like no one else had ever given him the chance to love them all the way. No one else had ever been man enough to say, “I want this. I want you, and I won’t accept anything less.” He hadn’t just cared for some nameless someone, he’d cared for Blaine in a way he’d only imagined in drunken fantasies and it had been perfect.

Kurt pulls his head back and lets it smack against the wall, hard enough echo through his skull. How dare he be relieved? How dare he be grateful that Blaine had read the writing on the wall and disappeared? He grids the heel of his hands into his eyes until sparks bloom under his eyelids.

Maybe, he thinks, that isn’t why Blaine left. Maybe he was just terrified that Kurt would wake up and laugh off their— whatever it was— like any other one-night-stand. That version isn’t any better.

He imagines his beautiful, wide-eyed, funny man dressing in silence, slipping out of the hotel room in the dark, afraid of how Kurt could hurt him if he was awake. Afraid that Kurt might think that it was all a little too . . . intense for him.

When he thinks back on this moment, crouched in a shaft of light, he’ll know it’s the vision of Blaine— scared and alone, hailing a cab in the snow— that gets him off of the floor. Here and now, he just knows that he has to move. If he has learned nothing from the last twelve hours, it’s that Blaine deserves so much more than the insignificant children who could not handle the weight of his affection. Kurt’s rage at those excuses for humanity will move him forward even if he doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing next.

Kurt takes the quickest shower of his life and grabs his phone from the bedside table. He could say that he doesn’t know where to go. Blaine didn’t leave a note, but Kurt remembers where Blaine goes when it all feels like too much. He knows where to go and if Blaine wants to be found, he’ll be there.

The rest—what he’ll say, what he’ll do—couldn’t possibly matter less.


	9. Things Unseen

He shouldn’t have been surprised that it was bright and busy.

Outside the fitness center, students bustle towards the doorways, undaunted by exhaustion or hangovers, and Kurt follows in their wake. For a moment, he worries about how easy it is for a random stranger to get past the OSU security system, but then he forgets how to think.

Directly inside the doorway, a glass wall extends from ceiling to floor and through the glass he sees Blaine facing off against a punching bag that doesn’t stand a chance. He’s dancing, shuffling as he catches the bag for two quick jabs and then ducks as his imaginary partner strikes back on the left. He’s fiercely proficient, and yet still the cutest thing Kurt’s ever seen in gym shorts. How all the other students aren’t falling off of their machines in distraction, Kurt can hardly guess.

Blaine’s almost the length of a stage away from where Kurt stands, but even from this distance, Kurt can tell that he’s been here for a while. Kurt wonders if he’s even been back to his dorm room. He could have had gym clothes stored here, ready for that inevitable moment when some stranger from New York goes all S&M on him in a nearby hotel.

 _What am I even doing here?_ Kurt thinks, ruefully. Blaine left, probably just hours after going to sleep and he must have had a reason. He could give himself three guesses, and they would all start with K. Kurt’s odd, Kurt’s empty, Kurt doesn’t have any idea what to do with a boyfriend who wants more than a brilliant conversation and a hanger for a stunning ensemble. Blaine left and Kurt cannot imagine where he got the utter hubris to follow him. This qualifies as stalker behavior anywhere outside of a Hollywood romantic comedy, and he should leave before Blaine looks out the window.

He should go. He shouldn't have come in the first place, but he’s here now, blocking traffic in a rec center hallway, and he’d never forgive himself if he left without saying something, even if that something has to be goodbye.

Kurt pulls out his phone, never taking his eyes off of Blaine’s back as it shifts around the bag. With one hand, he sends a text—

 **(12:34)** _Hello?_

And he waits.

For a long minute, nothing happens.

Then, Blaine stoops to lift his phone from the floor. His face lights up into a wide grin and falls just as quickly. Kurt’s heart sinks into his stomach.

But Blaine starts typing. After a count of three, Kurt’s phone vibrates. 

 **(12:36)** hi

 **(12:36)** _missed you this morning._

Blaine sinks down into a crouch on his heels and stares at what can only be Kurt’s message with a furrowed brow. He opens his mouth, as though trying to answer his phone directly, man to machine. Kurt’s half convinced he’s going to put it down and walk back to the punching bag when he replies.

 **(12:39)** sorry

Blaine frowns at his own text. Then again—

 **(12:40)** sorry

 **(12:41)** have a good trip back home

 **(12:41)** _I haven’t left yet._

Kurt presses his phone to his chest and feels the pulse of his own heartbeat under his fist. He places his right hand against the cool glass, beside Blaine’s image in the distance and takes a deep breath.

 **(12:43)** _Blaine, look out the window._

Blaine’s head shoots up to where Kurt stands. He purses his lips in surprise, first down at his phone, then back up at Kurt’s face. His eyes instantly shine with happiness, confusion, fear, or some overwhelmed combination of all three.

 **(12:44)** _Wait there. Don’t say anything. I need to do this, ok?_

Blaine nods.

 **(12:44)** _My mom died when I was 8. That’s not the point, but you need to know._

 **(12:45)** _In high school, my dad created a foundation in her name. There was a car crash and a settlement, and so he created a foundation in her honor, but that sort of thing takes a few years._

 **(12:45)** _The foundation was created my sophomore year and during the ceremony my father gave a speech. Blaine, he was so strong. He talked about her life and made the crowd laugh. When he got back to his seat, he grabbed my hand and gripped it so tight I could feel his nails cutting into my skin. That was when I realized that he needed me, not like a little kid who pays attention to his father’s diet, but like an adult. I needed to be strong, because he needed me. I needed him and he needed me and I was never going to feel that way about anyone else._

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut to cut off the tears. He can’t see the screen to keep typing and there’s no way that he can look up, because if Blaine’s gone or—worse—laughing, Kurt thinks he might die.

 **(12:47)** _I thought I was never going to feel that again with anyone, but I did last night. I know that I’ve only known you for —_

He checks his watch.

 **(12:47)** _— Fourteen hours, but I needed you. I think I might need you and I think you might have needed me too._

He looks up and finds Blaine, beautiful Blaine, standing just on the other side of the glass, eyes wide and wet. He’s gripping his phone like a lifeline and Kurt wants nothing more than to push through the glass and wrap him up in his arms.

 **(12:48)** _Our. . . **rendezvous** was probably too intense and not at all what I was expecting, but it happened. Blaine, you make me want to be needed, desperately, breathlessly, and I needed you to know that before—_

He doesn’t know how to end that sentence. The words won’t form, so he sends it as it is and starts again.

 **(12:49)** _I get on a plane for New York in two hours and I hope, I really hope, that I see you there someday. I know I can’t ask where you’re going after college or ask you to do anything for a man you’ve just met, but there’s this little old-fashioned movie theater that serves martinis in mason jars and I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve taken you there._

Kurt’s out of breath and out of bravery. He spent everything he had on a story he didn’t even know that he was going to tell, so he bites his lip and stares at the floor, holding his phone between his index finger and his thumb, like a grenade.

 **(12:51)**  new york

 **(12:51)** _excuse me?_

Kurt blinks up at the window, lost, and finds Blaine smiling through drying tears. He looks so pleased with himself and Kurt can’t fathom why.

 **(12:52)** That’s where I’m going. I move to New York in three months.

He might as well have added “you dummy” to the end of his text. Kurt gapes at his phone and at Blaine through the window like they’re two different entities. They might as well be; he wants to smack both of them. And kiss them, not necessarily in that order. 

 **(12:53)** _You never said!_

 **(12:53)** You never asked.

Kurt laughs, loud and high, like a child. His teeth are all probably showing and he really doesn’t care, not when Blaine sets his hand against Kurt’s on the other side of the glass and blushes down at his feet.

 **(12:54)** _Would it be too forward to make a request in advance?_

 **(12:54)** No, sir. Not at all.

 **(12:55)** _In that case, I would like you to go on a date with me in exactly three months._

 **(12:55)** Yes, sir. As you wish, sir.

As Kurt reads his text, Blaine holds up one finger and dashes off into the rec center, cell phone in hand. He disappears in a crowd of sweaty bodies, but Kurt can’t find a single part of his body or mind that’s worried. If he knows anything in this world, he knows that that boy is coming back to him at this window and he’s coming back to him in New York. Who know what they’ll be then, but what a gorgeous place to start.

Blaine comes bouncing back, holding something behind his back. He takes his position on the other side of the glass, right shoulder mirroring Kurt’s left, and pulls two manila folders from behind his back. As he raises the folders to his chest, he turns one around to reveal a message, written in purple sharpie in from one end to the other:

I NEED YOU TO KISS ME IN NEW YORK.

and the second—

SEE YOU SOON.

**Author's Note:**

> My Columbus is intentionally fictional. All walking distances are made of words and fairy dust.
> 
> Thanks to gluttonous_penguin and amongsoulsandshadows, my betas, my cheerleaders, and my comrades in arms. Also, thanks to chiasmuslovesme for commenting on an early version of chapters one through three, as well as to orangegirl22, wowbright, and foramomentonly for their writing motivation when the boys refused to color within the lines.


End file.
